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October 15, 2005
From Couch Potato to Athlete
It all started four years ago, on September 16, 2002. It was my 42nd birthday, and my wife and I had gone to the wine country for the weekend with a group of friends to celebrate. We came back on the 16th, road weary and just a little “partied out�.
After we had gotten unpacked, my wife wanted to go to the gym and workout. She was really, really insistent that she wanted to go work out, and she wanted me to go with her. This was about the last thing I wanted to do, but I reluctantly agreed. I had not been to a gym for probably 15 years, and I could not understand why it was so damned important to go that day.
Once we arrived at the gym, of course I didn’t really have any idea what to do. I had done some jogging in college, and a few times in the 1980’s did a couple of brief stints with weight lifting, but had never really taken fitness seriously. I did a few warm-up type of exercises, and then saw a weird stair-climbing type of machine. This one actually had a set of rotating stairs, that you vary the speed and such to match your ability. I decided that these would be a good way to see how good of shape I was still in.
I took off, and starting climbing stairs. As I was climbing the stairs, I started thinking about the guys that climbed up Tower 1 and Tower 2 of the World Trade Center just a year ago – and how it must have felt, climbing up those stairs, with 50 pounds of gear, going up into something that they had to know was going to be the most horrible scene they had ever witnessed. You have to remember that this was just a few days after the one-year anniversary of 9/11. September 11, 2001 had a profound effect on me – being in public works, we many times are on the front lines (in a support role) of emergencies – and I could not imagine how difficult it would have been to work through this event. I had also just finished reading the book “Report From Ground Zero�, by Dennis Smith, of Engine Company 42. He did a great job of documenting the firefighters journey into Tower No. 1 and 2, and the resulting death and chaos as both the towers pancaked down.
I started thinking, now if I had to climb those stairs, could I do it? So I worked on that machine for about 25 minutes, and climbed like 35 flights of stairs. When I was completely exhausted, couldn’t go any further, I stopped and thought to myself – If I had been in that building, I probably could not have been able to get out, because I was in such poor physical fitness.
That day was a turning point in my life…………………
Ever since that life-changing day at the gym in 2002, I have been embarked upon a journey to attempt to regain some of my youthful fitness. What follows in my story, of how I went from a couch potato, to an athlete. My hope is that some of you “non-athletes� out there will see how “easy� it is to make small changes in your lifestyle, that will pay huge dividends over time.
I started out on the fateful day, tipping the scales at a cool 190 pounds – exactly 40 pounds heavier than I was when I graduated high school. With lots of evening meetings, a full time job, a family and lots of other demands on my time, I had managed to get myself into a pretty sad routine of limited or no exercise, fast food, and eating pretty poorly.
After four years, of training two or three times a week (sometimes more) I now tip the scales at 165 pounds. I should note that I have not once “dieted� in order to lose these 25 pounds. I routinely run sub 7-minute miles, and have set a goal for 2006 to break into a 6-minute mile. I have completed lots of 5k races, three 10k races, two half marathons, five sprint distance and one Olympic distance triathlons. Training has become an integral part of my life, and I can not imagine a week that I do not work out.
Posted by Dennis at October 15, 2005 10:37 AM