In my early 20s (up until I was 26), I was in the best shape of my life. I would ride 60 miles on a bike every day after work. I entered a Race for the Cure 5k in my home town on a whim because, hey, why not? I got 2nd place in my age division and Iād never run a 5k race before in my life. I ate a vegetarian/ vegan diet and counted calories and tracked nutrition like it was my job. In short, I was obsessed with being fit.
Then, one day, I stabbed a handlebar through my leg while practicing mountain bike jumps.
I had to get over 30 stitches in my leg and the blunt force trauma messed up my leg muscle pretty bad. Ā I sat out of any and all exercise for over 3 months while I healed.Ā
In that 3 months, I continued to eat like I was still exercising for 2-3 hours a day. Needless to say, I gained weight. I gained A LOT of weight.
Itās been 7 years since I was aĀ āhealth nutā. In that time, I have flirted a little bit with slimming down here and there but Iāve never been committed to it quite like I was back then. More often than not, I have focused on getting fit for a few months and then I will, inevitably, fall off the wagon.
Ignoring my health and eating poorly has taken itās toll over these years. Besides the weight gain, Iāve suffered from knee and back problems, Iāve developed a fatty liver, and I have been diagnosed with high blood pressure (I have since gotten the blood pressure under control, thankfully). I have no doubt that if I donāt make a change, my issues are only going to get worse. While these factors are certainly good motivators to get healthy, they arenāt what made me take the plunge into trying to go full on āhealth nutā again.Ā
No, the biggest deciding factor on that was two-fold. The first is that I have the looming specter of death at a relatively young age from heart disease. My grandfather on my motherās side died of a severe heart attack at 61. Before that, he had heart surgery in his 50s. I am built just like him. He died when I was 20 and I felt like I never got enough time with him. I think a lot of my family feels that way. I donāt want to die that young.Ā
My second motivator to do this is related to the first. My girlfriend is younger than I am and I want to be with her for many, many more years. Iāve never loved another person like I love her and, for some reason, the thought of not growing old with her terrifies me. I want many years of quality life with, not only her, but all of my family.
There are many other factors for deciding to get healthy and I am sure I will talk about many of them in the future. But, those are the big ones.
In order to meet these goals, Iāve decided to do a sprint triathlon in September. Having a big goal like this pushes me to train and get fit. Iāve always done better when Iāve had a goal like this in mind.Ā Iāve decided on a triathlon because, in the past, Iāve had complications arise from focusing on one discipline too much. When I ran all the time I started developing knee problems, when I biked all the time I developed prostate issues from being on the saddle too much. IāveĀ read that training for triathlons is some of the safest endurance training you can do because you arenāt focusing on just one discipline and it is less likely to lead to injuries that come from doing something repetitive too much. Of course, thatās only what Iāve read. Weāll see what happens when I get out in the real world and give this a go. This is the first week of my training for the triathlon. Iāll be back in a few days to give a wrap-up on how it all went.Ā