The Reason it all began
This is a long story but it gives you my background from the start
As a child I had a medical issue and this caused me to gain weight. Looking back now, I’m not sure that this was really the reason for the weight gain, or whether it was an excuse that was a great story to cover that the weight gain was probably caused by other issues in my life. I was quite sedentary, and didn’t want to do much in the way of sport, fitness or to spend a lot of time with other children my age in general. When I was 12 I weighed about 70kg.
This continued until my early teens when the medical issues were resolved and I got into running to school and cycling around my home town of Napier. I went from coming 88th in my school cross country one year to 8th the next. Suddenly I was highly active. I was playing hockey, cycling a lot and by the age of 18 I was a gym addict, training up to 10 hours a week. I was always comparing myself to other people of a similar age and body shape and I felt great. (I was 88kg at this point in time)
I moved to Darwin and everything changed; it was "too hot" to do anything. So drinking, eating crap food and the dance floor of night clubs was the closest to exercise I would ever have done. I spent two years in Darwin and at times tried to get back into shape, going to the gym for a few months, cycling to work a few days a week but overall I found every excuse under the sun to remain sedentary.
One of my most memorable moments of my life was when I went bungy jumping in NZ for my 21st Birthday, they weighed me and wrote 101 on my wrist so the person knew which rope to use. I was so embarrassed. I told my mum that it was relating to the tensile strength of the rope rather than admitting that it was my weight. Seriously how had I reached 100kg? From here I moved to Brisbane and again drinking was my main entertainment. I may have been embarrassed about my weight and size but what would I do about it? I know, drink away the pain. I did a bit of exercise here and there, in fact at one point I was up to 15km on the treadmill a day while training for a half marathon. But alcohol, drugs and food got in the way of that. Life goes on.
Between the ages of 23-25 I was still trying here and there, going for walks most evenings, but this never seemed to do much difference. Anyone who has experienced this will know, you feel so useless. You think you’re doing everything you can to lose weight but it never seems to make a difference, then the cycle starts. You try exercise, you feel like you’re failing so you have a drink. You then eat because you’re tipsy and then you gain more weight even though you feel you should be losing it.
Days before my daughter Sapphire was born I spent some time with my little brother and sister at the Sunshine Coast. It was great to see them as I had never had the opportunity to really get to know them over the years prior. I will never forget trying to rock climb with them, I literally couldn't get above the bottom rocks before falling off, yet they could climb to the top to ring the buzzer. They were only 10 and 6 at the time. A photo was taken of me on this day and wow! it will forever be known as my ‘before’ photo (you will see this photo multiple times across all of my socials)
Sapphire's mother and I separated about 6 months later and after a while I decided it was time to make a real change. Now I am a single dad, I want to make sure that I show my daughter that you can do anything to can set your mind to, but more importantly I want to make sure I can run around with her in the years to come. I went back to similar habits following Einstein’s age-old saying "insanity = doing the same thing expecting a different result". After a few months I realised that I wasn’t seeing any weight loss so I decided to do something different and as the Fitbit craze had just taken off I bought myself one and a set of Electronic scales that saved my weight to an App. This ended up being a great investment in my future. I was embarrassed by my weight and now it was in writing. No hiding from it. In January 2014, at 25 years old, I weighed in at 107.9kg, a very sobering thought. I was already playing indoor soccer one night a week, so I started going for bush walks most weekend pushing the stroller and generally trying to get the age old 10,000 steps per day.
As I started to get active, I signed up for my first obstacle race and completed that in March 2014. What an achievement, all 7km in just over 3 hours (although other people were able to complete this in well under an hour) I was feeling dead, but the sense of enjoyment and accomplishment was amazing. That was a day I will always remember and a feeling that I wanted to get again.
Was this what I was going to do? Well I joined a gym again and started training for more of these races and completed another a few months later.
Things were working, by September my weight had come down to 98kg, trying a few different diet options including shakes and Paleo. They worked for me but weren't sustainable as I love food.
A friend who was also struggling with his weight asked me if I would like to try and do the Bribie Island short course triathlon with him (he had no idea how much this would change my life, and for this I thank him), I was cycling to work a few days a week and I knew how to run so I thought, “why not?”
Oh yeah, the other bit of a triathlon – the swim leg. Might be a bit of an issue, as I didn't know how to swim In my childhood. When I was very young, every time I got a cold my ear drums would burst. Due to scarring on my ear drums, putting my head under water was not something I wanted to do and learning to swim with everyone else in school just didn't work. But I had said to myself that I want to show Sapphire that "you can achieve anything that you set your mind to" so I called the local pool and organised swimming lessons for the both of us. Sapphire only being less than 2 years old meant we had slightly different lessons, although to be honest we were at a similar ability!
I struggled in my first lesson. I couldn't swim 10 metres without stopping and standing up to breathe. Weeks later Gillie, my instructor, told me that I was ready and asked me to come in the next morning to show him I could swim 300m continuously. I did it, probably took at least 12-15 minutes and every 20-40 metres I would revert to backstroke to catch my breath but I got there. Wow I got there! 300m straight. I was so proud of myself, as was he for getting me there.
That weekend I had my first race. Sapphire was having a sleepover at her aunties, I headed up nice and early and met my mate and his family. I was nervous but also extremely excited. Bike was racked, nervous wee done and I was standing there listening to the race briefing. I heard the words were coming out but all I could think about was that swim.
And then suddenly we were off! I was in the Clydesdale’s wave as I felt more comfortable being around bigger people. The current was strong but I was doing it, although it was not long until I was reverting to backstroke. If I was moving in the right direction I was happy. After a few minutes I could hear someone shouting out to me, it turned out I had gone too far and I wasn't going to be able to swim back into shore! They pulled me out where they were fishing and I ran back to the transition along the beach. Wow I did it! May have gone too far, but the swim was over, WOW! I ended up finishing the race quite comfortably in the end. It took me just over 49 minutes to finish the 300m swim, 10km ride and 2.5km run course.
Where to next? Well, after telling everyone how happy and proud I was of my effort, my friend said we should do the next race but go longer: 1km swim, 30km ride and 7km run. Hmmm yup, that sounded like me, I was hooked. After reading forums, magazines and talking to anyone who would listen, I decided that triathlon was for me and Ironman before the age of 30 was the next goal.
Looking back on this part of my life, and I'm sure you would agree, some of the strongest memories you will ever have will be the ones where you have feelings of disappointment. But what you do with those memories is the key. When I was in my early twenties I used substances such as alcohol, food and drugs to forget all about them. Now I use the memories to push me further, and strive toward the positive feeling and emotions from creating amazing memories of new achievements.
How will you let these kinds of moments shape your future?
