KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 (Bernama) -- Despite fasting, national track cycling queen Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri is bent on giving her best performance at the UCI Track Nations Cup tournament to be held in Konya, Turkey from March 14-16.
The athlete, nicknamed 'The Pocket Rocketwomen', admitted that it would be a big challenge for her, but she still aims to get on the podium and improve last year's achievement at the world-class tournament.
"My target is to do better than the previous edition, I want to gain new experiences by competing with world-class riders. Last year I reached the final of the keirin event.
"This year, I am aiming for the podium if given the chance even though the tournament is held during the fasting month which is also a challenge for me," she said when contacted by Bernama today.
Meanwhile, Nurul Izzah said her training schedule has now changed to late afternoon in the month of Ramadan.
She said she has also changed her eating schedule in an effort to ensure she remains energetic throughout the day and while training during this holy month for Muslims.
"There is a change in training time to the evening, we will train when it's close to breaking the fast, if it's in the morning early in the morning, I'm used to training like this, so far it's going well. In terms of nutrition, I prefer to take carbohydrates.
"I drink enough water during sahur, I drink a lot during iftar, to avoid dehydration, we also take protein drink before going to bed and during sahur," she said.
Recently, the native of Sungai Petani, Kedah shone when she won two gold medals in the keirin and 1 kilometre (km) women's time trial events as well as a bronze in the individual sprint, in addition to helping Malaysia win the silver in the team sprint.
What is even sweeter is that the 22-year-old athlete also broke the Asian record for the 1km time trial twice with a time of 1:06.229 seconds (s) in addition to renewing the national record (48.458s) in the team sprint with Anis Amira Rosidi and Nur Alyssa Farid.
-- BERNAMA
