The Other Part of the Metamorphosis Story, or My Health

Lest anyone think that the only reasons I have sought to reduce my weight and body fat were vanity and to move towards a possible goal of a Kona slot, let me give the rest of the story.

I should have included in my Metamorphosis post that in 2003, while I was doing GFT, I ran across Bill Taylor, Cathy Taylor's husband. I had met Bill in 2001 at Ironman USA, as well as Shelley, about whom I remember thinking "Man she's in much better shape than I am!" So I run into Bill during the marathon at GFT, and we ran together for a bit, and he remarked at how great I looked and said, "Not that you looked bad before--you were just a bit chubby." For a split second, I thought that was a mean thing to say, but then I snapped out of it and realized that I was so glad he was so honest. After all, it was my self-assessment that had spurred me to make changes.

I realize that my athletic and body composition objectives may be more aggressive than most, but I look at it this way: All this hauling around my sorry ass is hard enough on my body without making it even harder by eating poorly or weighing a lot. I want to be able to run well into my 70's and 80's! I want to be one of those old ladies that people talk about like, "Can you believe she is still doing THAT?" I guess to a certain extent, I AM that lady already. I certainly don't feel 49 years old (I'll be 50 at Ironman Florida!). And I am pretty sure that my next profession, or "hobby," will be to become a personal trainer and coach. And I definitely think it's important to look the part, and "walk the walk and talk the talk."

I have a number of things working against me being that old lady who's still running when she's 70. I have no ACL in my left knee, and part of my left medial meniscus is gone. I knew this before I even began running in 1998. I have a herniated disk that was confirmed in April, 2005, that may be all gone, but insurance won't pay for a "let's see" MRI. I'm perimenopausal and need to maintain my bone density and minimize the intensity of hot flashes, night sweats, and all those other interesting things that happen to women my age. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and joint degeneration all run in my family. I have watched too many of my aunts and uncles die after horrible, degenerative changes to their bodies that might have been prevented by lifestyle changes. I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters and they are all fat to obese, every one of them has "back problems," is tired, inflexible and suffers many more common colds in a year than I ever do. I can't control my genetics, but I can control how I live my life.

In early 2004, I asked my GP to run a full blood panel on me. She asked me why. I told her because I wanted to be sure my health was good, considering all the extra stress I place on my body, and secretly I wanted to see the impact of the changes I had been making to my diet. She thought it was a good idea, especially since she knows my family's history. I had had a full panel run in 1997 (this was before I took up endurance exercise, but I was in decent shape from years of bodybuilding) to compare the results to. The 1997 results showed me to be in fine health, at least from the perspective of all the measurements taken from my blood. Everything came back fine (actually pointing to outstanding health) from the 2004 workup except for my cholesterol. I was told it was "borderline high." WHAT???? How could that be, when I've done everything possible to eat right? I called the nurse and insisted that I needed to be retested, after reading up on testing protocol, and thinking we hadn't done everything right. Due to insurance restrictions, they didn't want to retest me for 3 months. So I waited and worried, but I went back gladly, and guess what? Everything was in line. Crisis averted!

Last fall, I had an "incident" at a pool that pointed out to me that something was not right. My blood pressure skyrocketed to 196/100 right afterwards, and stayed there for hours even once I had calmed down. Over the next few weeks, it came down some, but not to my usual borderline low reading of 110/70. So I knew that something else in my life needed to change. While we can't fully control our blood pressure, and it does tend to go up as we age, we can do our best to minimize lifestyle impact to it. It was around that time that I had a serious talk with myself about how I was leading my life, how did the triathlon training fit in and what is my purpose in life? Not to mention I needed to get that BP down! So again, I was presented with an opportunity to make some life changes, and I did, and the net net is that here I am writing all this crap for everyone to see. Why? So you understand that for me, this is all as much about my pure health (physical and mental) as it is about triathlon. The amount of exercise I do is excessive for general health. So it's doubly important to me that I do my very best to maintain superior health, given that I enjoy what I'm doing, plan to keep it up for awhile, and have so many things working against me.

My GP, who is overweight herself, comments every time I see her on what great condition I'm in and how pleased she is that I am doing everything possible to stay healthy, despite my penchant for extreme amounts of exercise! My orthopaedic guy commented to me that while all this running may not be so good for my knees, that it's way better than the alternative--being a couch potato--and that at least I have the good sense to minimize the amount of force being put on my joints by maintaining a low, but healthy, weight.

I want to live VIGOROUSLY. So it's important to me, not just for my triathlon performance, but for my LIFE performance, to take the best care of myself that I can. If in the process I can set a good example to others, and let's face it, look damn good doing it, then, well I guess that's part of the reason that I'm here in the first place.