Hi! I’m back! I know I’ve been gone for a little while but I’ve made a triumphant return! Those of you who follow this site regularly may remember the last post I made just about eighteen months ago. In it I was very candid about my relationship to training and the frequent health challenges that I dealt with during the year of Ironman training I underwent in 2017.
Now it’s 2019 and I’m back to training (almost) full time! And as with anything in life, I’ve also got a new set of challenges to work through.
The conclusion to the long sordid story that I told back in February 2018 was that I kept getting sick all through the winter and even into the spring time. It wasn’t fun and started to have a real effect on my day-to-day life and ability to function and work.
So I made a few big changes in my life.
The first was that I stopped swimming. Yup. Pretty much cold turkey. I remember the final workout that was the beginning of the end for me. I was struggling at the onset of yet another cold and still managed to push myself to the edge and beyond in a workout. Of course I should have held back (or better yet, skipped the session entirely) but part of it was that I was sick of being sick and wanted to get back to my old self.
My body had other plans. I went to bed with a headache, woke up with a cough, and never again felt as strong in the water as I did that day. Not long after, I sent an email to Coach Gerry and told him I was suspending my membership.
Quitting swim was a really tough decision that was hard to come to, but in the end I’ve realized how necessary it was. It’s strange to ponder the idea of losing something that feels like your whole world, only to discover a new one that you never knew you had. Still, I missed it.
So what did I do instead of swimming? Well, mostly I just slept. Long, luxurious 10-hour nights with no 5:00am alarm clock interruptions. I welcomed non-dried skin, flush and moisturized hair. I took it easy. Trained a little without my watch (and therefore no record or memory of what I actually did or did not to). Hung out with friends. Explored a lack of boundaries and discipline and pretty much got bored with it all.
So leaving the swim team was the first change I made. The second was choosing to go vegan.
In hindsight it’s interesting to think about those two things happening in tandem. Neither was really influenced by the other, but they’re definitely both connected in contributing to my current fitness level.
Much like swimming, I made the change to go vegan pretty much overnight. No transitioning, no researching. No planning and thinking and deciding. Nope, it was done and has remained that way ever since. Most simply put, the catalyst for this decision was watching the documentary “What the Health?” in which the narrator goes on a rampage against the meat and dairy industries by drumming up research on the high correlation between preventable cancers and an animal-based diet.
In my weakened and somewhat immunocompromised state, that was enough to shift things for me. The documentary has not been without its critics who fault the alarmist nature of its presentation as communicating a disingenuous message to viewers. But honestly, I didn’t care.
Eating burgers and steak and cheese and butter either causes cancer and heart disease or it doesn’t. That’s the sort of thing that only time and research can determine with anything approaching total certainty. But in the meantime, did I really have anything to lose by cutting these things out of my diet? Nope. Not at all.
So I ditched meat and dairy, and the hardest of all, eggs. Not sure if I ever wrote about this but I LOVED eggs. Probably too much so. I used to go through about half a dozen eggs per day (not kidding) so abandoning my go to source for protein was more of a mental challenge than a physical one. I got over dairy more easily than I thought I would (I had already been a bigger fan of almond and soy milks anyway) and getting rid of meat was easier than I would have expected it to be in a million years. For several weeks, I actually wondered if I was sleepwalking and ordering fast food burgers without realizing it because I did not miss meat at all! And the great thing is that I still don’t.
Perhaps my body was begging for this type of change and that’s why it came so easily. All told it took only a few days for me to hit the ground running on vegan eating and I haven’t looked back.
The best part of it all?
I haven’t been sick since.
To be fair, my lack of illness could be a result from eating a healthier diet overall. I’m eating vegetables and fruits as the bulk of my meals every day and I’ve abandoned many of the packaged, processed foods that were my staples for so long. But there are some things I can’t deny —
My allergies have gotten better.
My recovery times after hard workouts are WAY shorter.
I feel more nourished with less food.
Going beyond the personal, there are some larger things that I appreciate being a part of — like the sustainability benefits that are gained by ditching the beef industry. I also appreciate no longer having to be associated with the cruelty that is the mainstream American meat industry. Food consciousness is a vast web that touches many areas and requires many considerations, but going vegan feels like a nice step in the right direction for me.
So, beyond swimming, beyond eating, what else am I up to?
I saved the best update for last!
Recently, I teamed up with one of my most hardcore friends, Marian (Instagram: @mariant_fight) to launch the start of our very own fitness group called “Valkyrie Training.”
Marian currently trains in strength and Muay Thai fighting while I have continued my work with the cycling and running portion of triathlon. Together, we hope to bring the basics of fitness training to beginners looking to run that first race or do that first pull up and need coaches to help get them there. I’ve been fortunate in my years of training to have had the opportunity to work with and train alongside elite fitness coaches at the top of their game. But also in my years of training, I’ve been able to see more and more how intimidating it can be for people new to fitness just to get started working out.
Through Valkyrie, Marian and I hope to change that mentality. We wish to create a welcome community and team that anyone can join regardless of fitness level, whether they’ve been an athlete for their entire lives or have never managed to run a single mile without stopping. We’ve been hard at work on a series of videos and blog posts meant to inform and engage anyone interesting in learning more, and I hope that you’ll check us out!
Website: www.valkyrietraining.com
Instagram: @valkyrietraining
YouTube: www.valkyriesintraining.com
That’s it for me for now. Thanks for reading, and as always, thanks for following! I plan to be back more often with new posts, as well as occasional tips and insights.
Stay tuned for a follow up post on How to Get Started with Vegan Eating
