Ashleigh Neave, Cycling For Life

Ashleigh Neave is a Road Cycling champion! She is USANA’s youngest sponsored athlete from New Zealand, and she’s been with us since 2009. As a valued member of USANA’s athlete family, Ashleigh’s got lots of amazing achievements in her cycling career and she speaks highly of USANA products.

We got the chance to catch up with her and wanted to share her recent update with you:

“So it is currently August, I have been back in training for 2 months now. After some intense conditioning work, physio and a new addiction to yoga I am back with more strength and stability than ever. I have found that the stability postures at Bikram yoga have really helped me to develop balance in strength about my knee joints, keeping them straight and pain-free. So that is very good news, and looks good for the racing ahead. It goes without saying that I am more fired up for the upcoming season than ever before, in particular thanks to my Outward Bound experience for that. 🙂

Training is shifting from the base phase to strength and speed phase. A few weeks ago I threw myself into club racing once more after a solid four months rest and of course still continuing my USANA supplements and foods*. The good news is that I can still hold my own against the big boys in B grade in the time trial. I finished 5th in the latest club time trial. I do however need a few more hard miles in the legs to deal with these blokes on the climbs. The last road race I hung in until the last climb where I lost them 50m from the top, making all the difference on a fast descent. Riding home in the second bunch still proved to be a solid work out. I have also noticed considerable improvements in my descending skills after some time off to refresh the top 2 inches; I’m finding myself hitting speeds much quicker than before. (I would like to attribute faster speeds downhill to better bike handling skills after a heap of core training over the winter, rather than one too many desserts during my time off!)

Soon I will be slamming it out motor pacing behind the scooter over the Taupo-Napier road in preparation for the first race of the 2011/2012 summer season. I have never raced Taupo-Napier before; it should prove to be a tough race, especially since women race with the men. I am eager for a chance to prove that I am stronger than ever before, with an ever deepening hunger to perform well. I’m glad that my USANA products will sustain me over this gruelling period and I believe they give me the added edge to recover faster.

Aside from cycling, life is going well. I had good results from last semester (an A+, A and two B+s.) So I can’t really complain at that. I am living independently now too, spreading my wings away from home and starting to fend for myself a bit more in lieu of leaving my teenage years behind in the looming summer. My Grandma recently passed away, the day of my first exam last semester, so it has been a rough few weeks. We are all settling back into routine slowly. I still struggle to go to Hastings and not burst into tears sometimes though. Time will heal things no doubt, it has definitely added to my passion, I so want to make my Gran proud every time I race.

So all in all, all is well. :-)”

Ashleigh Neave

* Ashleigh takes Essentials, BiOmega III, Procosamine II, Active Calcium Plus, Nutrimeal, Proflavanol C100.