thefastedcyclist.com

Ketosis is the metabolic state in which some to all of the energy a body needs is derived from ketone bodies in the blood, as opposed to glycolysis where blood glucose is used to provide energy.  The ketones used for energy are the result of fat metabolism, which means that in ketosis your body is breaking down fat and using it for fuel.  There are three different forms of ketone bodies or ketones in the blood:  1. Beta hydroxybutyrate (ßHB) which is what the blood ketone meter tests for, 2. Aceto-acetate which is what the urine ketone strips test for, and 3. Acetone which is the ketone present in the breath, which the new ketone breath meters test for.

Why is being in ketosis a good thing, you may wonder?  The fact is that everyone (even the smallest professional cyclist) has at least tens of thousands of fat calories stored in their body.  This means that we all have an unlimited amount of energy stored inside us at any given time.  We just need to teach our bodies how to unlock and use that energy, which is what a ketogenic diet does;  it is the key to burning fat for fuel, losing weight while eating good, satisfying food, and having energy like you haven’t had in a long time!  It sounded great to me, which is why I started a keto diet.

A ketogenic (or keto) diet is simply a diet that will help your body get into ketosis so it is burning fat for fuel instead of sugar.  There are many different versions of keto diets, recipes, and keto websites out there now, but they all basically aim to achieve the same thing:  give your body the best chance to get into and maintain a ketone state.  It’s important to remember that fact when surfing the web and planning a keto diet.  It is also important to know that ketosis is a very individual thing; the things I do to produce ketones might not work for everyone.  This is the most fun and most frustrating part of ketosis, you have to self experiment and see what works for you.  Ketosis is also a very fragile state, and one big carbohydrate day can potentially kick you out of ketosis for several days.

So what are the basics of a ketogenic diet, or what should you look for when evaluating a diet to see if it’s a good keto diet?  First and most importantly, it has to be a diet that promotes low blood sugar and low insulin levels.  As you might imagine, there are many steps in the pathway that turns fatty acids in fat cells into ketone bodies that can be used for fuel.  Several of these steps are inhibited by the presence of insulin, which is why one binge can knock you out of ketosis until insulin levels settle back down.  A ketogenic diet is a diet that is very low in carbohydrates.  Carbs cause the strongest insulin response, especially the yummy, highly processed kind of carbs.  Those processed carbs are very quickly absorbed, which causes a rapid spike in blood sugar.  This in turn causes a large insulin release to counteract the high blood sugar, which drops blood sugar, causing you to be tired and hungry and to eat more carbs, and the cycle continues.  This is the reason why people feel lethargic after eating carbs and why you get hungry so quickly after eating straight carbs:  its your blood sugar doing this yo-yo dance up and down.  Many keto experts recommend eating less than 50 grams of carbs a day, although the number of carbs is going to be different for everyone depending on how sensitive they are to carbs, as well as a number of other factors.

A ketogenic diet also has only moderate protein, which is where it is different from the high-protein, low-fat Atkins type diets.  Protein also causes an insulin response, although not as dramatic as carbs.  So, an excess of protein will release enough insulin to keep you out of ketosis.  You need to eat enough protein to feed your muscles and repair tissues, but should be careful not to eat too much protein.  The right amount is probably somewhere between 0.6-1.0 gram per pound of lean body mass (Lean Body Mass Calculator) to get into and stay in ketosis.

Finally, and most importantly, a ketogenic diet is high in fat, which is the macronutrient that causes the least insulin release.  By high in fat I mean 65-80% fat.  Sounds crazy right, that by eating mostly fat you can lose weight, feel great, and have almost unlimited energy.  I promise it is the truth, and the beauty of this diet.  Fat is the thing in food that gives it good texture and taste.  It is also the part of food that makes you feel full after eating.  What this has meant to me is no more only egg white dishes, lots of extra bacon, heavy cream in my coffee, no more salad dressing on the side but right there on the salad, lots of butter, and many other delicious changes.  The keto diet really is an easy diet to stick to because you feel full and satisfied after you eat, and never feel like you are sacrificing flavor or texture for your diet.  In fact I do not even think of it as a diet, but think of it as the way I will always eat now because unlike a diet, with severe restrictions and cutting calories, I can eat this way forever!  What makes it even easier is that now there are keto versions of all the yummy foods that are high in carbs.  I have had some delicious keto ice cream and keto bread.

Next time I will go more into ketosis, how to know if you’re there, tips for getting there, as well as some common concerns/misconceptions about ketosis.  So stay tuned, and until then, here is the recipe for my new favorite dessert:

Keto Chocolate Mousse

Hey everyone, just wanted to tell you about this film that is coming to Denver.  Its a documentary about a man, Phil Koeghan, who re-created the 1928 Tour de France.  It happened to be one of the longest and hardest Tours ever with only 25% of the riders that started being able to finish.  Also, Phil rides it on a 1920’s bike with 1920’s gear.  It was shot in super hi-def and the footage of the classic tour climbs are like nothing you have ever seen before.  This film is a must for all cycling lovers and all Tour de France fanatics, like me.  It will only be showing in Denver one night only, March 5, 2018 at the Continental Theatre at Monoco and Hampden.  We need 60 people to reserve tickets before they will show it, but we’re already nearly halfway there.  If you’re interested, heres the link to buy tickets, your card won’t be charged unless we sell enough tickets to show the film:

https://tickets.demand.film/event/3517/

Thanks and I hope to see you there!

Happy Holidays everybody!! It has been a long time since I have posted anything, but this season of over-indulgences, Holiday parties and hangovers seemed like the perfect time to write down some thoughts. The Holidaze is the perfect time to put our “Feast or Fast” lifestyle to good use. In a lot of ways, this season was like every other Christmas where I attempted to eat my weight in Christmas cookies, and drink my weight in excellent wine (my dad always pulls some gems out of his cellar for the holidays). So, what’s the difference this year you might ask? The difference is that while I was eating and drinking like that this year, it was guilt free and not with the thought of “once New Year’s comes I am going to really start my diet”. I enjoyed it more than I have in the past. That is for several reasons: 1. I fasted during the days when I was eating and drinking so much at night and 2. I knew that it will be easier to get rid of that extra holiday weight once the New Year comes around.

One problem with dieting during the holidays is that there are often parties on consecutive days, which I used to use as an excuse to eat as much as I wanted for all of those days. By the end of those days, I would not really be hungry, and not really be full. I would just be eating because it was time to eat or because someone put some food in front of me. Fasting has made me more mindful of my body, my stomach, and the reasons that I put food in my mouth. By fasting and eating only when hungry, it helps to break that cycle of eating for any reason besides true physiological hunger. The night after Christmas and the next day I ended up doing a 22 hour fast because it took that long for me to be hungry again after my Christmas feast.

Since the last time I posted anything, I have really transitioned from being mostly concerned with fasting to now understanding how fasting and a ketogenic diet work together to give me the best results. So that will be the focus of my next few posts for anyone out there still reading: 1. What it means to be on a ketogenic diet and what it means to be in ketosis 2. How fasting can help that happen 3. Why this is the best way to live and to exercise 4. How I have evolved from the fasted cyclist to the keto-cyclist. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!!

It feels like now is a good time to step back and think about the science of fasting and why it works for fat-based weight loss.  It turns out that research has shown that weight gain is not related to exercise, or how many calories you eat as we have been taught our entire lives.  We don’t believe in the calories in minus calories out theory anymore.  Weight gain is from a hormonal imbalance, specifically an excess of the hormone insulin.  Insulin is a storage hormone that is released by the pancreas in response to an increase in blood sugar.  It binds receptors on cells in the body that allow glucose to be transported into those cells so they can use it to make ATP, the energy currency in the body.  Insulin also causes gluconeogenesis (or the making of new glucose molecules) in the liver and muscles.  Insulin causes lipogenesis (creation of new fat) and promotes glycogen creation and storage.  The bottom line is that high insulin levels causes sugar and fat storage.  All of these things are good responses after you eat a meal and want your body to lower your blood sugar and store energy, but as long as there is insulin present the body will not burn fat for fuel.  The way to lose fat then is to have longer periods of time where there is no insulin circulating in your body, or some fasting every day.  The very worst thing you can do is to eat small meals throughout the day as we have been taught recently.  By eating like that you constantly have insulin circulating so your body is always in storage mode and never in fat-burning mode.

Different foods cause a different insulin response, and also the time of day you eat those foods cause a different insulin response.  Highly processed carbohydrates like white bread, soda, ice cream, and candy get absorbed almost directly into your blood and cause a blood sugar spike, causing the biggest insulin response by the body.  Proteins cause less insulin release than carbohydrates but still will cause the pancreas to release some insulin.  Fat causes the least insulin response, and therefore is the best thing to eat for fat-based weight loss.  Wow, does that really make sense? you might ask, eat fat to lose fat.  It’s contrary to everything we have been taught since we were little.  The truth is that since the food pyramid with carbohydrate as its base, and the low-fat diet have been introduced into America, obesity and diabetes type II has exploded into an epidemic.

Knowing all of this, the best way to lose fat is to practice intermittent fasting and to eat a mostly fat based diet.  The keto diet people have been on to this for a while, and when you eat keto, it makes it easier to fast, which makes it easier to lose fat. These two things go hand in hand and work together very well.  I will definitely get more into those topics in the future, I just wanted to give a little introduction right now.

I made it 6 days and 23 hours before I broke my fast. I could have gone that extra hour but hadn’t had dinner with my family for a week, so I decided to end it a little early. Here’s my observations  from a week of fasting:
1.  Most importantly, I like to eat. After day 4, I was never physically hungry, but there were times when I just wanted some food in my mouth, or wanted something with flavor to eat. LaCroix and Kombucha were OK, but at then end were not quite satisfying enough.  And I was definitely looking forward to dinner, drinks and a concert this weekend with some friends.

2. I never felt the euphoria that some people feel when their body switches over to ketones exclusively for fuel. That was kind of disappointing. Some of the things you read when people talk about how good they feel when fasting makes you think, “why would you ever even eat?”  I did not have that experience.  It was a daily challenge to keep fasting, and I considered ending it at some point almost every day.

3.  I typically felt good in the mornings and by the evening my energy level was pretty low, and I was sluggish. I would get light-headed when I stood up quickly as well in the evenings.  This is supposedly related to dehydration but I drank a lot of water and was peeing clear so I don’t think that was the problem.

4. I did not sleep well at all while fasting. I would toss and turn and get up at least twice to go to the bathroom. To be fair, I am not the best sleeper in the best of conditions, but this last week was especially bad. I have read that others have that problem with fasting as well. The last night of my fast I had a dream that I was in my parents pantry eating potato chips by the handful. I cannot ever remember having had a dream about eating before, so that was interesting. I took it as a sign that it was time to eat again.

5. I did feel good during the day, and fasting did not affect my work at all. In fact, no one even knew I was fasting except my one confidant at work. I did some big cases and took care of some really sick people and never felt like I was compromising their care. I would have eaten right away if I thought that.  I lifted weights at the beginning of the fast, but was too busy with work to exercise at the end. That would have been interesting to see how I felt.

6. It took me 2 days to get into ketosis, based on blood sugar and urine ketones, but once I got there, my body stayed there. I hope that my body will return to ketosis more easily now after shorter fasts. Hopefully this will improve my insulin sensitivity as well.  If nothing else I proved to myself that I can do it.

7.  I lost 12 pounds during my 7 day fast. From what I read, you can expect to lose about 1/2 to 3/4 pound of fat for every day that you fast. So I lost a lot of water and some fat, and created some good momentum to carry me forward.

All things considered, my fast was a big success, but not something that I am planning on repeating anytime soon.  I will probably do a long Fast once a year for its anti-cancer properties, but not more than that. I am going to continue my daily intermittent fasting, aiming for 16-20 hours of fasting most days, and keep on keepin’ on. My next couple blogs are going to be about fat-adaption and hormonal theory of obesity, so check back in. Until then, thanks for reading!

“Until you’re broken, you don’t know what you’re made of.  It gives you the ability to build yourself all over again, but Stronger than ever”

I made it through the weekend without breaking my fast. It wasn’t the most fun weekend of my life, but it also wasn’t the worst. Here’s what it looked like:

Saturday (Day 2)- I was still making the transition to fat burning today. Mid-day my blood sugar was 124 (normal fasting is 75-105, so I was a little higher than I should have been) and I had trace urinary ketones. I felt pretty good, a little bit hungry, but I was expecting this. I have heard and read that the second day is the hardest in terms of that, and so I was ready to ride it out. I went to a neighbors birthday party that night, which in hindsight might not have been the best decision. It was at a delicious Mexican restaurant, with all you can eat tacos and all you care to drink Margs. These are 2 of my favorite things to consume and it took a bit of will power to stay there and drink my club soda with a lime and not try all the delicious looking food and drinks being paraded by me. But I held strong and made it home without any cheating at all. That night my sugar was 104 and ketones were moderate. Now I was starting to get into some more ketosis.  I was pretty hungry and really wanting to put something in my mouth with some flavor, but settled for a Cherry-Lime Lacroix and went to bed.

Sunday (Day 3)- I woke up feeling pretty good.  My glucose was 82 and my ketones were moderate. Now we were in business!  I was expecting to not be hungry today, but I was very hungry and feeling low on energy and sluggish. I checked my sugar at that time and it was 61. That’s a little too low and so I ate a little bone broth and felt a lot better. I am not going to lie though, it was a rough day. I felt hungry at times throughout the day and didn’t have very good energy. I thought about calling it quits, but decided to finish the day and hope for a better day 4.  I had some bone broth at dinner with my family and drank 1/2 a kombucha. I crawled into bed and hoped that the next day was going to be better or else my fast was over.

Monday (Day 4)- I woke up feeling better and more rested than I had the previous days. My sugar was 84 and my ketones were large now. And as a nice bonus I had lost 8 pounds since I had started my fast! Probably alot of water, but hopefully a little fat too.  This was definitely where I wanted my body to be and so off to work I went. I had much better energy and felt pretty good, and I wasn’t really hungry at all throughout the day. So for me, it was 3 days before my hunger hormones finally started to settle down. When I got home from work, I checked my sugar again and it was 82 with large ketones. I was feeling a lot better now, and was excited to see if I could go the full 7 days. That’s where I am right now and things are good. I’m planning on some bone broth for dinner and a little kombucha action and see what tomorrow brings. I’ll post again in a couple of days and let you know how things are going then. Until then, thanks for reading!

“And so I try to understand
What I can’t hold in my hand
And whatever I find, I’ll find my way back to you”

Now that my big ride is over I have been thinking about doing a longer fast, and by that I mean 3-7 days.  I was trying to find a good time to do it, and woke up Friday morning and decided that this weekend would be the right time to start, and since I hadn’t eaten since dinner Thursday I had already started!  I am on call this weekend, so I will just be hanging around the house trying to get stuff done, and keeping my head down hoping my pager does not go off.  If I were to fast three days then my fast would end on Sunday night, seven days would end Thursday at dinner time.  As always with fasting, I am going to play it by ear and see how it all plays out.  If I’m feeling good I’ll keep it going and if I’m not feeling right I’ll shut it down.  When I start to fast, I will just drink black coffee, water, and tea and take a multivitamin and see how long that lasts.  If I feel like I need more than I will try drinking some Kombucha and eating a little bone broth with salt added.

There are many different kinds of fasts as I am sure all of you know now.  The most hardcore is the water only fast.  I am not going to do this for fear of a crushing caffeine headache, and also the fact that without a little caffeine in the morning it’s very difficult for me to get out of bed.  The other fasts are less hardcore and much easier to stick to, and that is the kind of fast I am planning on doing.  Kombucha and bone broth are acceptable in a fast because they do not have enough protein or carbs to stimulate much insulin release, and can also make your fast so much more comfortable.  Some fat in your coffee is also acceptable, and some people use cream, or butter, or coconut oil.  Again the idea is to make sure it’s a little bit of fat, which should not cause much insulin to be released by your body at all.  I am not going to do that though, I am going to stick to my black coffee and iced Americanos with no room.

I am going to do it like the science nerd that I am, so I have ketone strips, to test my urine and see how my body responds,  and a blood glucose monitor to keep an eye on my sugars, all ready to go.  I’ll add some updates along the way and then a recap after it’s all over.

The Triple Bypass Ride (TBP) ended up a little different from what I had expected this last weekend.  As many of you know, there have been a lot of fires in Summit County here in Colorado, and so on Thursday afternoon, the Triple Bypass Ride was cancelled due to air quality and concerns about rider safety.  This was absolutely the right thing to do under the circumstances, but it definitely messed up my plans.  My buddy was on a plane from California to ride the TBP with me and I knew he wouldn’t let me get away with a day off.  We had been planning this for a year, we were trained and carbo-loaded, and we were going to ride!  So after talking through our options, we decided to ride the TBP route anyway, and my wonderful wife volunteered to be support (like she always does).  I carbo-loaded just as I had planned, and my weight finished up 6 pounds heavier and so I was pretty sure that my stores were as full as they could be.  I woke up, ate a big breakfast and was in the car at 5 Am on the road to Evergreen, where we parked and were riding by 6 AM.

The TBP consists of three passes, the first one being Squaw (or Juniper Pass).  I took it slow making sure that I had enough gas for the whole day.  I ended up getting up the first pass with the third fastest time I had ever had for that segment.  So far so good, but there was still a long way to go.  I regrouped and refueled in Idaho Springs, still feeling pretty good.  My refueling during the ride was mostly refined carbs and sugar to raise my blood sugar and conserve my glycogen for as long as possible.

The next pass was Loveland Pass, which is the hardest, tallest pass of the ride.  It starts in Georgetown, and continues 16 miles with 3,437 feet of elevation gain;  it is very steep.  I ended up going up this part faster than I ever had before.  This is the segment I was worried about the most, and this is where my fasting/carbo-loading experiment would be most tested.  If I had insufficient stores then I would bonk here since there is no real way to eat enough to fuel this part of the ride.  After Loveland Pass, 60% of the distance and 80% of the climbing is done.  All that is left is Vail Pass.

During the usual route of the TBP you do a “little” hill called Swan Mountain Road between Loveland and Vail Passes.  We decided to skip that part because the fires were supposedly at the end of Swan Mountain Road and the trail we would take from there was closed.  I had a little mechanical problem with my brakes on the descent from Loveland Pass, so the decision was made to end the ride on the top of Vail Pass, and skip the descent for safety reasons.  The final pass, Vail Pass, started in Frisco and was 11 miles long with 1,311 feet of elevation gain.  I finished strong on that pass, going up it faster than I ever had before.  Even better was that my family was waiting on the top with ice cream and Coke, what a great finish!!

All things considered, my carbo-loading experiment was a resounding success.  I was able to do a daily fast the week before the ride, start loading on Wednesday night, and load all day Thursday and Friday for my Saturday event.  By loading and eating steadily, I had plenty of energy during my ride, and never felt like I was close to bonking.  I also tend to get leg cramps on longer rides, and I did not have any issues with that during the ride.  I  had 48 segments that I got a top 3 time on, including my fastest time up two of the three passes.  It was a beautiful, long day on the bike and a successful experiment, followed by and fun and relaxing night in Vail, what more can you ask for?

“I eat too much, drink too much, want too much.  Too Much!” – Dave Matthews

My big bike ride of the season is coming up this weekend, and so I thought it was a good time to think and write about carbo loading.  My ride is the Triple Bypass (TBP), which covers 120 miles and 10,000 feet of elevation gain in one day as I inch from Evergreen, Colorado to Avon, Colorado.  It is a very difficult day, and certainly not one that I can do fasted.  There are too many steep gradients, too much high altitude and the day is just too long.  At least for now…

When I first started this experiment what I really wanted to do was be able to practice intermittent fasting most of the time, but be able to cram my muscles and liver with glycogen for the occasional big endurance event that came up.  It is carbohydrates that your liver turns into glycogen in the presence of insulin, and since my non-fasting diet is mostly high fat and low carb, my glycogen stores have been habitually low for the last few months.  When you ride a bicycle (or do any exercise) you burn glycogen and fat for fuel, and the ratio of which you burn is different for every individual based on a variety of factors.  In general though, if you are at a low intensity you are burning more fat and if you are riding at a high intensity then you are burning mostly glycogen;  I think of glycogen as jet fuel and fat as diesel fuel.  The human body can store only 1,500 – 2,000 or so calories of glycogen, and has 100,000s calories of fat energy (even skinny Tour de France riders have plenty of fat energy).  I will probably burn 4000-5000 calories during the TBP, much more than I will have stored, so I need to have a strategy to avoid using all my glycogen.  If anyone has ever experienced “hitting the wall” or “bonking” or know someone who has, it is what happens when your body runs out of glycogen.  I can tell you from personal experience it is not very fun.  You get nauseous, fatigued, have no energy, cold, and most people have very negative feelings about everything.  One good way to avoid running out of glycogen is to maximize your glycogen stores, or carbo load,  right before the event.  Another way is to keep your intensity low enough that you spend most of your time in the fat burning zone.  A final way is to ingest carbohydrates that your body can easily use during the event, thus sparing your precious glycogen stores.

I am going to do what physiologists call non-depletion carbo-loading where I will try to cram my glycogen stores as full as they can be right before my ride.  To properly do this I am going to need to start 2-3 days before the event.  Contrary to past beliefs, you cannot fill your glycogen in one meal or even in one day.  For those 2-3 days I am going to eat 80-85% carbs and 4 grams of carbs for every pound of body weight, which is a lot of carbs and calories, and going to be harder than it sounds.  I am going to focus on rice, juice, bagels, yogurt, bread, oatmeal, pasta, potatoes, and waffles.  I am going to stay away from high fat foods like cheese, butter and oils because they take longer to digest and do not help your glycogen.  I am also going to stay away from highly refined carbs as much as possible like white bread, white rice, candy, and chips.  They spike the blood sugar too fast and so they get used as fuel instead of being stored as glycogen.  (As an aside those highly refined or high glycemic carbs will be prefect for during the ride where I will want a quick blood sugar spike).  You might ask: “How do you know if your carbo loading is working?”  As luck would have it our body has a built-in method to let us know we are loaded to the gills with glycogen.  For every gram of stored carbohydrate or glycogen, your body stores 3 grams of water, so I expect that my weight will go up 3-5 pounds from my loading.  This means that by glycogen loading I am also super-hydrating my body.  Wow, two for the price of one and the ability to eat the foods I have been mostly avoiding for the last few months.  Its win win win.  I will report back next week and let you know how it went and how I felt.  Wish me luck…

“Standing on top of the world
For a little while
Standing on top of the world
Gonna give it all we got” – Bon Jovi

This previous weekend I decided that I was going to do something I have never done before on a bicycle.  I was going to ride to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain.  One advantage to living in Colorado is that I have access to some pretty amazing, and very tall mountains.  I have hiked to the top of a handful of these so-called ’14ers, or 14,000 feet or higher peaks, and driven to the top of a couple of others, but I have never attempted a bike ride to the top.  The road to the summit of Mt. Evans is the highest auto road in North America, and at 14,130 feet, would be the highest I have ever ridden my bike.  The previous highest point I have been on my bike is a few feet over 12,000 feet.  I knew I was in for a great adventure and a very difficult ride.

Since I have been fasting, the dilemma when doing a big ride like this  is always how to eat before the ride (how to “carbo load”), and how to eat while on the ride.  For short rides its easy, I don’t do anything different then I normally would.  But this ride was 65 miles and 7500 feet elevation gain, not just a casual ride.  I will have a whole post on carbo loading coming soon, but for this ride I did traditional carbo loading with lots of carbs and lots of calories.  During the ride I was going to do my usual nutrition routine as well and eat food high in carbs on a regular schedule during my ride.  And of course drink lots of fluids.

On the big day, I drove to the parking spot and got all of my stuff ready.  And then my Garmin died.  Tragedy! It actually usually would not have been a big deal, but for big rides like this I like to keep an eye on my heart rate.  I feel like keeping myself from getting into the anaerobic zone increases my chances of finishing and decreases the amount of suffering at the end.  It must be the physiologist in me.  At last I got it working and I was off.

The first part of the ride was foggy and cold.  It is normally a beautiful ride I have done many times, but that day the fog was so dense I couldn’t really see anything except a little bit of road ahead of me.

It was going to be a really long ride if the weather was like this the whole way.  But I pushed on and at about 10,000 feet I broke through the clouds and saw a beautiful sunny day. You gotta love Colorado!

I got to Echo Lake which is the point where you turn left to ride up to Mt. Evans, or turn around to go home.  I had done this first leg of the ride many times, and that day I felt better than I ever had at this point!  My wife and kids met me there and gave me a PB&J sandwich and Gatorade to fuel up.  I saw this sign, and knew that I was in for a hard ride, but an unforgettable one.

I rode slowly and surely towards the top.  It was a steady climb through the trees at first, but then I got above the tree line and could see the road cutting across the  mountain.  I knew I had a long way to go at that point, and it was a little discouraging.  But you keep turning the pedals over and keep moving forward.  Before I knew it I was at Summit Lake and getting nearer the top with every pedal turn. It was a beautiful, sunny day and conditions were perfect and so I kept going for my summit push!

The road got steeper, the air got thinner, and now there were mountain goats crossing the road every mile or so.  It was a very surreal experience.

As the summit got nearer there were more switchbacks, and the switchbacks got sharper and sharper.  The wind also became more of a factor with less and less to block it.  I would be cruising along with a nice tailwind, then turn a corner and into a furious headwind that threatened to stop all my forward momentum.  The only thing that kept me going was now the top was in sight.  I put my head down and kept pedaling until I reached the summit!! As I turned into the parking lot, applause broke out, people were cheering for me.  I felt like a mountain stage winner at the Tour de France.  And of course my awesome and supportive family were there waiting for me with a nice big Gatorade and a piece of pizza!