This post NOT brought to you by...

From Wikipedia

That's right folks, I hope you are sitting down.  It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last coffee.  I know, I know, hard to believe, but in the midst of our visit to Beijing, I decided to take a break from caffeine for a while.  Just to prove to myself that I can do it.  I used to semi-regularly take breaks from caffeine, maybe 5 years or more ago, but since I got back into the "gun club," let's just say there hasn't been much of an occasion to do it.  What was the catalyst in Beijing?  Nothing in particular, really, I just felt like it was time.  Well, actually, it was a little bit inconvenient to get a decent, affordable cup of coffee where we were staying at, and so I just decided to go without for a few days...and that carried over to after we got back to Taiwan.  Of course, here I have easy access to my own coffee machine, beans, and all other necessary materials required to brew a fine and affordable pot of coffee...but I just felt like I wanted to go with no coffee for a while and see what happened.

Sure, I was a tad edgy at first, but since then I feel like I have slept better, gotten out of bed in the morning easier, and had more even energy levels throughout the day, without having to suck down a pot of coffee to keep myself going!  It's been pretty nice.  I have even been able to get out and do my workouts in the mornings (well, most mornings, anyhow - look for an overdue post on my July and August workouts coming before too long) without ingesting any type of caffeine beforehand, something that for a long time would have been a bit of a joke (and not a funny one).

My intent is to regain being able to use caffeine on a select basis as a performance enhancer / ergogenic aid for exercise and sport.  Caffeine's performance-enhancing properties for endurance sport are well-documented and I have known of them for a long, long time - but it only really works if you don't customarily use it.  I plan to break it out when I run the Taiwan Ironman 70.3 triathlon at the end of October and perhaps for select long training bouts before that, but not too often - I want to see how it helps me when it is "go time."

These 3 weeks have not been entirely without caffeine, though - I've had a few sodas (I like to drink soda with my burgers, that or beer, and it's not always appropriate to knock back on the 'ol "wheat juice" any time of day, you know?) and a milk tea or two, but compared to coffee, these drinks are poor sources of caffeine.  It's been a lot easier than I feared it might be.

GJS