Author Background
Prior to triathlon my fitness activities consisted of local amateur league football, weight lifting and five-a-side football. For a period of around 5 years I used to teach fitness classes such as Bodypump, studio cycling and circuit training, so you could say that I was relatively fit, certainly fit for being able to do my job as a fitness instructor. In 2006 I whilst on a year out working and travelling around America I sustained a hernia whilst riding on a rollercoaster in Las Vegas. On my return home I didn’t get it repaired as the NHS in the UK was in the midst of a MSRA bug crisis with lots of stories of folk going into hospital for small operations and then contracting this virus and suffering from serious illness thereafter.
My job changed and I become a part time sports lecturer and eventually progressed into my present position of a sports manager at a local inner city college. Due to my hernia causing me discomfort I couldn’t do any sustained intense exercise and my weight slowly crept up on me. Plus I wasn’t teaching fitness classes anymore and my diet wasn’t anything to write home about. I finally plucked up the courage to get my hernia repaired in January 2012 and then then to go through a long period of recovery to make sure that I wouldn’t have a reoccurrence whilst exercising again.
A few things happened to inspire me to ‘sort myself out again’. One was watching the Ironman Triatletes including my brother Tony and friend Rob taking on this massive endurance event in May 2012. Also my friend Marc who is married to my niece Sarah, went from doing no exercise in May 2012 to only last week completing the Blackpool Marathon in under 5 hours, an amazing achievement. Marc keeps an account of his couch to running champ at http://hemingwayrun.wordpress.com/
Many others connected to me have been sucked along in a wave of enthusiasm and I have been reconnected with some old friends along the way as well as meeting a lot of new ones. The journey begins….
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