Back on track to fitness
Stuff reporter Amberleigh Jack has been training to be ready for New Zealand’s biggest fun run, Round the Bays 2023, this Sunday. Are you going to join her?
For a number of years, if you asked me, I’d tell you I was a fit person.
Despite too long of doing too little, I still see myself as a fit person.
Ultimately, it’s easier to tell myself that than to realise that if I attempted a workout I smashed a few years ago it would likely leave me curled in a foetal position on a sweat-drenched floor, in a world of pain.
Just a few years ago, I trained at a CrossFit gym most days.
I competed at a pretty gruelling CrossFit competition and had plans to enter a novice weightlifting and Strongman competition.
I spent my spare time at rockclimbing gyms and my go-to stress release was an evening run in the rain.
Somehow, before I even noticed, life happened. Fitness habits were forgotten far more quickly than they were made. Time with my husband was more valuable than time in the gym. I swapped freelancing for full-time work and ditched my lawnmowing side hustle. Around 15,000 steps a day instantly fell from my normal routine.
My formally strict diet made way for late-night snacks on the couch.
Yet, I told myself, I was still the same fit person. It’s an easy lie to tell ourselves when changes happen slowly enough to not see them coming.
Compared to many, I’m not unfit. I have tackled a few fitness challenges recently. I survived them, just. But taking breaks or dropping weights became the norm over battling through the ‘‘pain cave’’.
And what I’m realising is returning to fitness is just as difficult, and often as demotivating, as starting from scratch. Maybe even more so.
I know it’s do-able. A decade ago I was a chain-smoker, occasional binge-drinker and had not stepped foot in a gym since an injury knocked me out of competitive gymnastics as a teenager.
My plan for 2023 is to find a way back to fitness. Maybe I still can compete in a weightlifting competition. Maybe I’ll tackle Strongman.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking part in my first Round the Bays.