Along with two of my teammates, I have decided this cycling season to make an auspicious break with the way we've been cycling in past seasons by beginning to integrate Ayurvedic principles into our athletic endeavors. We've been feeling that we can use our cycling to improve our overall health and fitness, and that the way we've been cycling in the past may actually be undermining our long-term health goals.
Therefore, we intend to follow the program that John Douillard, DC, has outlined in his book "Body, Mind, and Sport." Douillard has been an elite athlete himself, competing (and placing respectably) in the famous Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii. He has worked for years in this area of applying Ayurvedic knowledge to athletic activity, and we think his work is a good start for applying Vedic knowledge to a sport we love and enjoy so much.
For lack of a better name, we're calling what we're doing Ayurvedic Cycling (AVC). We don't think of it as the Douillard program, because he didn't invent it himself. Vedic knowledge, he's just figured a way to apply it to modern exercise and sports (for which he gets a lot of credit). His recommendations are the starting point for us.
If any of you also have an interest in culturing your physiology to bring into your cycling a level of ease and effortlessness while maintaining levels of peak performance, then you are warmly invited to follow along in this blog.
We anticipate that AVC will have a very beneficial effect on improving our overall health and longevity as we attempt to age gracefully over the next several decades. We still have specific cycling goals (such as the sub-5hr century), but mastering the process of cycling in the zone (the purpose of AVC) will be our main focus for this cycling season.
Since I'm a beginner at this, I am not going to try to teach, nor try to convince, others that this is what they should be doing. We're all on the learning curve. This is just something that I've decided to do. And, I thought tha others might also be interested, thus this posting.
Here's to a great cycling season, no matter how you ride!
