Still in Monument Valley . . .

Oh! I have forgotten to tell you about what have happened in that hotel we found in the middle of the night, somewhere at Monument Valley . . .

Desertic area and in the dark we found this mini city called Gouldings Lodge, everything is named the same: Goulding's Hotel, Goulding's Restaurant, Goulding's Gas Station, Goulding's Museum, Gouding's Souvenir Store, Goulding's Camping, Goulding's Tour, in the end it was only missing Gounding's Police Department! Lol

The recepcionist offered the most economic room at 130 dollars, and when we hesitated about leave, he offered a cabin for 80 bucks. We got it  right away!

We were celebrating in the Isuzu while following a truck that was showing us the way, as our Goulding's cabin was located 2 miles from the entrance. 

In a total darkness, we saw our room lighted only by the two vehicles lights. It seemed a small duplex, encircled by a metal fence my height and it was three foot raised, maybe to protect against coyotes!?  

Scary! We hesitated while still in the Isuzu, but it was so late, and it was so hard to find a hotel in that road, that we decided to take a look on the inside. 

I stepped in ahead and did a disappointment face. It was just to scare Florencia, as the room was awesome! It was not a duplex, but a whole unit, a big room for both of us, it had a huge living room with three couches and a big TV screen, besides big kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

Happy, we stayed, and made sure all windowns and doors were locked! 

Rooms explored, we prepared a fast snack on the kitchen, unpacked some stuff and I went to the bathroom ready for a relaxing shower. Suddenly Florencia screamed and I heard her fast steps into the bedroom. Damn! Chilled to the bone I threw my towel on the floor and put my shorts on as fast as I could.

The intruder was in the kitchen she screamed from the bed: UN RATÓN, UN RATÓN EN NUESTRA HABITACIÓN!!

It was so late, I called the front desk, just to calm Florencia down, I did the complain, and received two mouse traps that instead of cheese were filled with peanut butter! Flor was afraid to find myself trapped in there before the mouse! Lol We locked ourselves in the bedroom and Flor could only sleep after closing the gap under the door using a big towel...  

Next post then, we continue our trip until Kingman, AZ!!

Click here to go to the 5th day of our Journey . . . 

Moab - Monument Valley

In the early morning I discovered the best bike path ever!!

Very true! With no crossing roads, the path goes close to The Arches National Park and pass nearby the canions,  revealing fantastic views!

It was an easy workout, with only twice 10 minutes on a faster pace, just to stimulate legs a little bit.

Bike: 38km - 1h12min

On the GPS, there was no more swimming pools on the way until Los Angeles, so I hopped in the pool while in Moab, before getting behind the wheels again . . . 

The swim was really easy, so I focused on technic exercises. I also did some under water shots to have an idea of my stroke efficiency . . .  Lots to improve!! 

400y warm up, 4x100y drill, 200y kicking, 8x25y building, 4x100y drill, 400y pull, 4x100y aerobic @1'40", 200y warm down.

Swim: 2.600y - 50min 

With no monster training during this trip, the only scary stuff we saw, was at the Dinossaur museum at Blanding, UT!! Lol

It was very cool to see the exhibition, specially the idea generated by some fossils that would suggest dinossaurs had not scaly skin, but they were actually covered by feathers, like giant birds!

Back to the Isuzussaur, we kept in big steps towards the south. The next stop was another national park, it was actually the first national park of Utah, founded in 1908: The Natural Bridges National Monument.

It is featured by three natural bridges, carved by time by the action of the Colorado river. We did a hiking that took about 1 hour to the base of the first one, called Sipacu, named in Navajo's language, the indians who used to live in this area. The greatness of this rocks are impressive, and we took hours imagining the river action around this million years. It was the river who went down or the rocks that went up!?? Lol

Not far from there, it was time for the Isuzu to get into the trail again, and we went down Moki Dugway, a tiny rustic trail road with about 3 miles plenty of switch backs and amazing views.  

During the trip, we also saw two other formations:

Gooseneck State Park (imagine a river that has decided to make a turn!)

Shaped while it was a plain surface, the San Juan river, with no rush, molded by the years more than goose necks, one of the world's most famous meanders.

And the Mexican Hat (how come that rock ended up in that top!?)

Shaped by nature miracle, or it could be Medusa that seducted a Mexican fellow with his hat! Lol

With the sun close to the horizon, and fulfilled with awesomeness, we decided to go forward. We were too late to visit the "Monument Valley" (central right pic) so we left futher expeditions to the next day!

A little hard to find hotel in that county, we ended up almost on the Arizona's border, a few miles after the park, but still in that region called Monument Valley.

Click here to read more about this night at Monument  Valley . . . 

Grand Junction - Moab

Woke up early in the morning in Grand Junction, and started the day with a "Running & Shooting"!!

The city is very cool, with a great artistic look on the main streeth, and pretty mountains in the background, so it was really a pleasant run. I was forced to stop couple times to make sure I got a nice pic, like in the sculpture of a dinosaur riding a bike above!

Run: 10km - 45min

Breakfast in the hotel, time to relax a bit and read emails, before a quick stop to swim at Orchad Mesa Pool.

600m warm up, 3x200m drills, 200m kick, 400m pull, 10x100m @1'30" (building 1-3), 200m easy. 

Swim: 3km - 1hour
(Not to count the time in the trampolim!)

I was feeling very tired, was even thinking that Grand Junction could be like 10.000ft high, but afterwards checking in the map, I realized there was nothing wrong, just I was really smashed! Lol

Work done, time to hit the road!

We passed by Fruita, a very cute city, where we had burritos for lunch followed by a quick city tour drive.

Back to the road, for sure one of the most incredible ones we have drove. Always following the Colorado River, which carved in thousands of years, beautiful views in the mountains around. 

As fantastic, as tricky! As at one time we have decided to explore a way that says innofensively "Onion Creek". But later at Google Maps, we discover the real name of the road was "Rose Garden Hill Safari Route".

A super cool way! We drove through creeks and wear the Isuzu 4x4, it was pretty fun at the beginning but afterwards on a attempt to do the loop, we spent more than two hours, to find the way back. 

How nice it was to be in the pavement again! The Isuzu was already very colorful, from the red dust.

Past this adventure, we didn't want to explore anything anymore. Lol So we drove nonstop until Moab.

We got there before the sunset, so we decided to stretch the drive into "The Arches Nacional Park", another rocky wonder.

From the park we looked for a hotel and rested until next day.

Click here to go to the 4th day of our Journey...

Glenwood Springs - Grand Junction

What a great start to our trip!

In 2013, Glenwood Springs was named the most fun city in the US, so I knew we would not be losing time while there. 

Woke up early, and at breakfast I found many maps of cycling routes. A great ride is the 25 miles bike path between Glenwood and Aspen, the Rio Grande trail.  

But then I saw on the map this nice climb, 24 miles long, difficult level, with great views and right by my hotel. Perfect, I was ready for it! Got an extra protein bar in my pocket, and told Florencia that I could take a little longer than expected.

The beggining was really spectacular, with great panoramic views (pic in the left down corner), but  I didn't ride too long, before ending up with no outlet, and opening the map again, to find a comma in between numbers 2 and 4, so my climb became 10 times shorter (or 2,4 miles!). haha Disappointed I resumed the workout on the bike path getting close to some beautiful canyon views.

Bike: 24mi - 1h18min

Back to the hotel I met a couple who was ready to go for a bike tour. He was saying to the hotel staff: "We left the car in the hotel parking lot, is that ok!? We will ride for about 2 hours or 5 minutes, depends on the weather." So I saw how lucky I was to be done at that time, as before the fastest clock's hand could turn a loop, it came a pretty heavy rain, that lasted almost for an hour, flooding the hotel entrance. 

When finally the rain went away, we rushed to go to an amusement park located on the top of this mountain. We got there by tram over a beautiful view. And we headed first over a giant swing, just on the edge on that huge clif. In the last picture below you can see how much fun we had together!! Lol

After all that adrenaline of being pulled out of the mountain on the giant swing, we have also joined other stressless attractions and visited two caverns plenty of geology lessons and also nice fun tales. 

The problem came on the time to go away. The heavy rain came back and due to the lightening, the tram went out of work, so we had to wait on the cold of the rain, for almost one hour before getting an improvised bus to get us down to the base, where the Isuzu was waiting for us.

After that cold, nothing better than a hot springs swimming pool! And what if its a 405ft long swimming pool!? Amazing!!

Every swimmer knows how nice is to enter in a warm swimming pool (90°F), and just to enter! As after warming up in a few strokes, it gets terrible hot. But on that day, I had just an easy one, so it was all  very nice!!

Swim: 1600y - 25min

Back in the Isuzu, heading West, we didn't drive that far, until getting into the Colorado National Monument, with no words to describe such amazingness, here follows some shots . . . 

The National Park is located near Grand Junction, and has about 24 miles on a curvy road that crosses it, almost reaching the nearby city, Fruita.

There is more than 10 panoramic view points, with many hike options. We got there by the end of the day and had to rush to drive through all the roadway.

This was one of the best parks in our trip, and we both wished we have had more time to explore it, I would say you wanna spend like 4-5 hours on this park.

On the dark, and already tired, we came back to Grand Junction and found a pretty good hotel, also economic, right in downtown, Historic Melrose Hotel, if by chance you are passing by!

Click here to go to the 3rd day of our Journey...

From Boulder to Los Angeles!

After a big and great block of training with the Apex crew, it was time to drive back to LA. Florencia came to visit me for a few days in Boulder, and has joined me on the trip back to California.

Boulder is the perfect city for training, at least in the summer! And so on, even Florencia did a couple workouts at the gym and went walking on a few trails where I was running. It is a tiny city, but with lots to do its impossible to get bored, in the picture above we are in downtown at Pearl St.

The trip straight away could be done in 17 hours, but driving from Colo to Cali, is like reading "The Alquimist", from Paulo Coelho: You can do it in one day, but you can also go really deep, and it can take several days, if not weeks!

Due to my racing season, I couldn't spend more than a week, so we loaded the car with most of belongings, and shortly we were driving an itinerant residence. Felt a lot like a homeless, but instead of a shopping cart I had my whole stuff in the Isuzu! Including my bike, which I would often take away for training.

The idea was to travel with no rush, we had plans "a", "b" and "c". It would all depend on our will to stay a little longer, explore, or just hit the road.

The result was 1.345mi in six days, and we stopped over: Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Moab, Monument Valley and Kingman. Along the way we decided to not go through Las Vegas, as I would be racing there soon, so there was a second trip coming soon!

I think we were very lucky with all the hotels, stops, and attractions, they were all very nice, plus I didn`t miss one day of training, and while I was working out, Flor was dedicated writing her thesis to conclude a Tourism degree back in Argentina. 

The Isuzu couldn`t fit better in this trip, specially crossing the Mojave desert and when getting lost at La Sal Mountains, luckly the 4x4 was up to date! 

More than 2000 pictures and several hours of video! I will be editing and posting piece by piece of our adventure crossing the West side of US!

Click here to the 2nd day of our Journey!

Brain in Shape (Part 1)

Leaving all those dreams from my last post, let’s come back to reality, maybe a reality that you don’t even know about yourself . . . Who is in charge, you or your brain!?

Quite often a difficult relationship, but knowing better your brain can lever big time your long term goals.

At first is good to remind that brains are always worried about the urgent. In danger or stress, it will give you an abnormal strength and if needed to run, other than doing speed PBs, you would go over obstacles that you never thought you could. Only hours later you are going to notice scratches and wounds caused by the defensive actions.

What if there is no danger in sight?

Well, then the grey mass, is going to prepare yourself for a future danger, in other words, it’s time to store as much energy as possible. And that’s why it’s so hard to exchange your comfort zone to study, diet, work and workout, as all these tasks will not bring you any immediate benefits.

That’s why you will need to persevere to reach any long term goals, and here comes motivation . . . I like this word because it derives from motive, and basically what you need is to give a good reason for your brain to spend all those calories, or why to not store energy when you your goal is to lose weight.

Each person has it particularity when it comes to motivation. For my “profession”, having a notebook with all my workouts is enough, as I don’t want to have any “chicken” workout written down. For your diet it’s even more important, as you are depriving your brain from its most precious thing.

Not talking only about calories, I’m talking about fat!

The captain of your body is made of more than 75% of fat, and cholesterol is what makes your brain works by neural synapses.

I know, we all thought that cholesterol was something harmful, and as David Perlmutter says on his book, Grain Brain: “Ironically, ever since we ‘scientized’ nutrition, the state of our health has declined.”

Yep, your brain has been washed up. And if we could have no body fat, there would be no brain! Making true those statements about gorgeous women with no content! Lol

On the same way, against the idea of bad cholesterol, you will find a lot more on this website: http://www.survivediabetes.com/lowfat.html

>>> continue . . . Part 2

Brain in Shape (part 2)

>>> If you missed, here is Part 1 link.

Luckily time is progressing, but maybe due to comercial issues, it’s kind of hard to hear about this things. So here I am trying to write down what I have learnt since I started noticing alterations on my routine blood exams: thyroid imbalance, high insulin, low testosterone, lack of vitamin D and total cholesterol at 281.

A great doctor from my hometown, Curitiba, wisely told me not to worry about cholesterol, but that I should make sure I could fix all the rest, I couldn`t be competitive with all those blood results.

Hormone intake would be a hard path, as I could test positive for an anti-doping test, and I would need support from my National Federation for a therapeutic exemption use, which I rather avoid.

Since then I started to research the reason why my system was in such bad shape!

Our bodies produce around 70% of the cholesterol available in our blood, and the less cholesterol we ingest, the more cholesterol our body will produce. The reason why we produce cholesterol is that it links neurons in our brains. So if there is not enough cholesterol available in our body, we would probably evolve mental diseases.

The “bad” cholesterol LDL, has also a very important function as it is the one in charge to deliver cholesterol cells to the brain.

Modern scientists point the sugar as the real bad guy. Well known to cause diabetes, it also promotes oxidation and inflammation in the blood vessels, producing obesity, lethargy, tiredness, mental prejudice, strokes and heart attack.

Great video about this: Sugar: The Bitter Truth, Robert. H. Lustig MD.

According to Dr. David Perlmutter, the excess of sugar on blood vessels will promote fast oxidation of the “Low Density Lipoprotein”, the LDL cholesterol, an important carrier protein bringing vital cholesterol to brain cells. Only if oxidized it could be called a “bad cholesterol”, as does it wreak havoc on blood vessels. So the high sugar diet can cause coronary artery disease, other than diabetes, arthrosclerosis and Alzheimer`s, this one can also be called as diabetes type 3.

Interesting is that the worse sugar available is fructose. Yes! That so natural one from fruits. Fructose is whole metabolized by the liver, differently from glucose, which is distribucted by liver and mitochondrias. On this way, fructose don't even enter in the blood circulation. And although the brain got that tasty flavor, it will not perceive any calories, asking you to eat more and more.
Sugar is scientifically proved to be addicted and only one hour after having sugar with no exercise, it will all be accumulated as adipose tissue, or the popular localized fat.

Fruits itself, still something healty, as the enzimes and fibers do the work and comunicate with the brain. The problem is the fructose in fruit juices or added in cookies, cakes, breads, yogurt, and so many things.

Tips:

- Include fat on your diet, specially those with Omega 3. (Fish, Nuts, Avocado, Meats...)
- Sugar, pasta and bread, ONLY during or right after working out. 
- Avoid sugary drinks, including fruit juices.
- Avoid Gluten
- Be careful with cereals, specially bar cereals, if you put some of those in the oven they will become caramel as there is so much sugar added!
- Eat dark chocolates with more than 70% of Cacao.
- Eat lots of vegetebles, green leafs and tomatos.