Alright. So I’ve thoroughly established and embraced who I am and where I’m at currently. I’ve been honest and faced the painful truth and shared my situation with the world. But now what? Sitting here and continuing to rehash the problems isn’t going to get us anywhere. This isn’t a presidential campaign. I’m not here to talk myself in circles and get nothing done. This is going to be a self inflicted semi-dictator ship. A military like conquest to defeat my enemy before it defeats me. But what does that mean exactly? How do I go about making this attempt different than all my other “I’m going to start tomorrow” campaigns? Well after defining the problem I find it necessary to define where it is exactly that I want to end up.   So what are my ambitions? Get healthy? Nah, that’s too vague. Return to elite level competition and take on the world? No thanks, there’s too much heartache and blood pressure medication required to attempt that. What I want is to have freedom again. The freedom to walk down the beach with my shirt off without feeling self conscious. The freedom to wake up one morning to beautiful weather and an empty schedule and decide to go ride 100+ miles WITHOUT it inebriating me to the point where I can’t function for a week while I recover. I want the freedom to race a crit or a Friday night in T-town just for the enjoyment of it. I want to get back to enjoying cycling again. Actually, I want to truly enjoy cycling for the first time in my life.   So let me clarify that briefly. I can’t honestly look back and say that I’ve ever known how to truly enjoy riding my bike. I have enjoyed my results and I have enjoyed the process of training with my friends and suffering through the day. But if left to my own devices with no one there to do it with me, I didn’t like riding my bike. If you’re wondering how that would ever be possible for me, then you’ve obviously never met my mother. Her neurotic “little league” parent syndrome was the definition of unhealthy narcissism. The overwhelming psychotic pressure she placed on my sister and I to not only win, but to also beat every one, every day, at everything would make any kid want to light their bike on fire. The daily berating for having a slower “warm up jump” than another rider, or heaven forbid we lose a local race to another rider, we flat out abusive. Her own jealousy and hatred of our training partners and teammates, and by extension their families, prohibited us from ever developing friendships with anyone within the sport until she finally ran off and deserted us. That day was a very welcome relief.   So how do you break that profusely horrific level of expectation so that you can get back to the basics and actually enjoy something you’ve never known how to enjoy? Well for me making a drastic course realignment has typically required a serious break in my routine and a firm reset into a new pattern. People pay me every day to help keep the on the right path and make sure that every step taken is the correct one. But when you’re the teacher, who is there to guide you? I’ve always had all the knowledge of training, nutrition and recovery I need to get where I want to go. But I have been in a horrible place emotionally and been doing a piss poor job of ever holding myself accountable.   So enter this blog and a wild last minute trip to Hawaii. Now for everyone who no longer feels sorry for me because I am going to Hawaii, let me point out that I never asked for anyone to feel sorry for me. And secondly, I fully acknowledge that I am very blessed to have the ability and the luck to swing this trip. The combination of dirt cheap airfare and AirBnB (along with a glass or two of bourbon), helped to push me over the edge and dip into my savings as I hit the “GO” button for this trip. I booked a tiny 1 room cabin in the middle of nowhere, packed my bike and got a dirt cheap rental car. I had no idea where I was going to wind up or how “easy” my day to day was going to be, but I was going for it anyway. So off we go…   Now, for those who interact with me often, you’ll know that I routinely say “I despise most people” and would often prefer to live in the woods without cable or internet. Well, that’s exactly what I got when I arrived in Pahoa, HI. Situated deep in the “wet” side of the Big Island, I found my self in total hippie country where everyone was on the no “B.S.C” plan. BSC stands for no Bras/Showers/Cars. Everyone has dreadlocks and hitch hikes everywhere. I’m all for the concept of living “off the grid”, but this was more than even I was ready for. The closest “grocery” store was a minimum of 30min away and that’s if you didn’t get stuck on a 1 lane road behind someone who considered 10mph BELOW the speed limit to be speeding. It was immediately obvious that this week was going to move at an entirely different pace than I was accustomed to. But it turns out that was going to be painfully perfect.   After arriving I crashed out and woke up the next day ready to move ahead on my “reset”. I went grocery shopping and stuffed the mini fridge full of only foods on my food plan (I’ll go into more detail of what I’m eating and why in another post). Without any junk food in the house and the nearest store 30+ minutes away, I was going to have no choice but to eat right. It wound up being an emotional and painful week as my body rejected and then adapted to a better way of fueling and ultimately I got my metabolism and energy levels back to where they belong. Along with changing my eating, I began riding on some of the most beautiful roads I’ve possibly ever seen. During my week there I undulated on back roads by the water, took a totally dirt road for miles to a hidden beach, and even spent 2.5 hours climbing up the side of a volcano. I had great aspirations of logging 100+ miles every day, but my severely out-of-shape limited those expectations greatly.   While I wasn’t able to log nearly the 500 miles I was hoping for in 8 days, I was able to spend plenty of time alone with my thoughts. Rather than going to the beach or trying local food spots, I spent the majority of my time alone in the cabin writing these blogs posts and facing my thoughts. With no other outlet of communication I came face to face with the extreme isolation LA had left me yearning for. Which ultimately made me realize that hiding from the world is not what I really want. And what I need is a life with a balance of seclusion and social interaction, with surroundings that make me relaxed and happy. If any one of those elements is out of alignment I will undoubtedly start spiraling downward again.   So as I get ready to board my plane back to the mainland and back to my “home” in LA, I leave with a renewed awareness of who I am and what I need to do in order to continue my journey back to health and happiness. The next few months are undoubtedly going to be turbulent as I make changes to my body and my life as I shoot for my end goal of racing a T-town Friday night without embarrassing myself by the end of the season. When I return to LA I will continue with my posts, detailing my training, nutrition and progress and I hope all of you will stay tuned. The positive feedback I have received has been overwhelming and I can only hope that my posts will help others as much as others have been helping me. I promise to keep my transparency on the emotional side as well. Life it not all sunshine and daisies so neither will my blog posts be.   It seems extra fitting that I leave Hawaii saying “aloha”, as aloha means both hello and goodbye in Hawaiian. Because all at once I am saying goodbye to who and where I was, as I say hello to everything that comes next.   Aloha…