Saturday, August 1, 2009

Halekoa Drive, YOU GOT OWNED today

Yes! Finally made Halekoa Drive my b**** today.  I climbed all of her without stopping; sitting and standing in the paddle.  I just love watching the people in shock and awe.  I see people struggling to walk up the damn hill. That's when I'll yell 'imagine doing this on a bike!' and they simply stop, shake their head and wipe the drool off their gaping mouths.  Priceless.

Had a wonderful pre-ride meal. 4 really ripe bananas with mac-nut butter on them. Followed by an Oat Cake.  During the ride, had a pretty good combination of LaraBars.  I consumed the cherry pie plus the banana bread. Tasty as all hell! That, mixed in with some Ultima electrolyte drink make for a wonderful taste.  And to think, my breakfast tomorrow will be more of the same alternating peanut butter or some mac nut butter with a date-raspberry smoothie.  And then, it's off for a nice bike ride. God damn, I love it.  

And on that note, a lot of people have been asking about how this all started. How 7 months ago, I went from basically nothing to where I'm at today.  Indeed, it's quite a transformation.  So let's start at the beginning. Rewind back to January 2009.  I weighed 185 lbs and I was basically tired of being tired of being tired.  I got sick a lot in 2008 and had digestive problems that required 'back work'.  I'll spare you the details suffice it to say that I'm glad I'll never EVEr deal with that again.  I knew there had to be a better way and armed with desperation and a desire to be a pro endurance athlete, I set out on my journey to take responsibility of my health.  I wasn't married to any product, I was ready to do whatever it took to right the ship.  As such, I read about the power of green smoothies which is basically a fruit and water blended drink.  So, I began making these smoothies for 2/3 of my meals at first, keeping lunch open to a salad with some animal protein.  Still not vegan yet.  Then, I read more and more about digestion and realized how hard animal protein is to digest especially for the athlete.  At which point, it was early March and I dropped like 20 lbs in the first month.  I was slowly getting the body of my dreams and since everyone told me I was crazy, I knew I was on the right track!

And so, sometime around March, I cut all meat and animal products, cheese, dairy, etc from my diet and wow, things were incredible. I'm talking mental clarity to no end. Ridiculous energy...even today! I mean, how many people can be like 'I just climbed the steepest pitches Oahu has to offer AT THE END of my ride, I'm going to rest up then run 9 miles straight uphill, no flats whatsoever. Go home and repeat."  Few.  In march, I dropped another 30 lbs to make it 50 and that's when I realized what happened: total transformation occurred.  I didn't look the same, I didn't feel the same...in short, I changed my life completely. I'm talking a 1080.  With all of this energy, I started running in February for 20 minutes a day to get in shape.  I ran my first race, the Great Aloha Run and placed a 6:24 time for the course...I giggle at this time now.    This was good enough for 52nd place out of however many thousands ran that course. I think it was like 17,000 or something like that. 

What's my favorite smoothie? Well, in no particular order (because I just add in what feels and tastes right), here's what i've been using:
Flax seed, cinnamon, vanilla, cacao, dulse, kale or collard greens (a LOT), 2 bananas, mango, strawberry, blueberries and dates. Yum. Throw in a LaraBar for a crumble and you've got a wonderful, wonderful meal.  

Training Log:
AM - Stupid long cycle. Halekoa Drive to finish.  After this hill, NO HILL looks that steep or that long. I mean, it's so long and ridiculous it's no wonder people don't bother with it.  
PM - 9 miles, of which I averaged a pace of 6.34 / mile at a 3% grade for the whole run. Didn't change grades whatsoever and kept driving at a harder rate than what Kauai calls for.  My goal is to hit 6 minute miles going up hills. I can probably do 3 miles at 6 minute pace before pushing the heart rate to 180 or thereabouts. 

Diet: I love saturdays because I get to chow down like it's no ones business =)
All over the place!
Pre-bike: Electrolyte drink, Oatcake, 4 bananas plus mac-nut butter.
During bike: 2 larabars, electrolyte drink and 1 banana.
Post-bike - 4 banana smoothie with cacao, romaine and raw granola. INCREDIBLE!!!!
Snack - LaraBar.
Lunch - 2 more LaraBars, 2 bananas, 1 peach, soy protein drink
Dinner - 1 bowl of homemade vegan chili, raw flax chips, huge salad with avocado and braggs liquid amino's, amy's all vegan, no soy or dairy veggie pizza.  

And I still think I under-ate today! Tomorrow, I'm going to go for a long bike ride, probably put in close to 80 miles or so. Will let you know how that goes. 

No comments:

Post a Comment