Am I an athlete?

Forgive a non-soccer post. I promise this will be a one off. I wanted to get a little personal for a bit and talk about something that I have been working pretty hard towards.

Am I an athlete?

This is a question that I thought I knew the answer to. It wasn’t the answer I wanted it to be, either.

I was sports mad as a kid. Still am, but it was especially defining to me growing up. I played everything – hockey, tennis, basketball, track & field, soccer, wrestling, you name it. Hell, I even went lawn bowling a few times. What I didn’t play, I watched obsessively.

Sports mad doesn’t begin to accurately describe it. It was the single most important thing to me, which made it especially hard for me to accept the answer to my question above.

No, I wasn’t really. I wasn’t bad at sports (well, maybe hockey, I was pretty bad at hockey), but I wasn’t great at any of them either. There would be no pro dreams for me, no Olympic glory. That didn’t make me unique. The majority of kids that play sports don’t get close to those things either. They didn’t seem as frustrated by it as I was, though.

I grew up, of course. Eventually, I found a more balanced way to love sports. As I grew older, I played less and less sports until, eventually, I didn’t play any at all. It showed. I gained weight. That weight gain caused me to be even less active. More weight was gained. It’s a vicious cycle and one many people are familiar with, I’m sure.

I still watched sports, of course. However, the watching was now tied into unhealthy behaviours. Too many late nights and way, way too many bad things put into my body during those late nights.

It got to the point where I needed to make a change or I was counting down the days to an early grave. Even if I beat the odds and lived a full life expectancy, I wasn’t going to have a quality of life – my joints were going to hurt, doing basic things were going to cause me pain.

Then, in January 2017, I started to wind things back. It wasn’t a straight line. I lost a lot of weight quickly that year, then gained some back. A full behaviour change was not yet in the cards.

A bigger shock to the system came a year later when a friend died by suicide. I wrote about that here, if you want to know more about that.

The biggest changes started in March 2020 though. Yeah, the pandemic had a silver lining in my case. It acted as a catalyst to really get my fitness back and, more importantly, make lifestyle changes. I simply couldn’t do the things that were holding me back anymore. By the time things started to open up slowly, I didn’t miss them.

What I eventually found was a bike. The joy of riding one was something that I had forgotten, but that I quickly remembered.

I had owned bikes as an adult. Had a couple stolen, even, but they were items that took up space, more than they became utilitarian machines that gave me freedom of movement around the city. As a bonus, they are also fat melting machines.

That wasn’t really the goal at the start. In fact, I started with short Bike Share rides to run errands. In Spring 2022, I was given a hand-me-down, old Triumph “mountain bike” (or what constituted a mountain bike in the early 1990s) that had seen better days, but it was rideable and mine. My rides got a little longer, and the efforts seemed a little easier. Late November 2022, I  got a new gravel bike, which I have been riding on an indoor trainer (more than 3,000km, in fact) over the winter. It has been out on the road exactly 4 times to date. It has shifters I had never used before and tires a little thinner than seem appropriate. All that makes what I’m trying to do in a couple weeks fairly insane.

Four rides or not, I feel pretty in control. In fact, I can honestly say that today I feel fully in control of all aspects of my life for the first time maybe ever. I am close to 70lbs lighter than when I made my 2017 New Year’s Resolution (I’m 4.5 lbs off what I wrestled at in Grade 12 and far stronger than I was then now).

Fat. Melting. Machine.

So, that brings me back to my question. Am I an athlete?

There’s only one way to find out. I need to challenge myself again. That’s exactly what I have been doing. I have been training (and I always call it that – I’m training, not exercising or working out or…) to ride an 80km gravel bike event. My hope is that it will be the first bike event of many that I ride over the next few years. Maybe even the rest of my life.

This event isn’t competitive. It’s a charity ride for Jack Ride, a charity that supports mental health initiatives to help prevent suicide and addiction in youth. I’m partly riding in the memory of the friend I referenced above, but it’s also a lot about me and the journey I’ve been on. A 80km ride is a good challenge. I want to ride it as fast as I can too (I have 3h 15m in mind, but until I arrive on the day I can’t know what speed is possible). If I do well, then maybe down the line I’ll add a racing component to it. I’m really hoping to, actually, but I’ve promised more experienced cyclists in my life to take things one step at a time.

The most important thing, however, is that I’m once again inspired by the idea of competing in sport — and competing against the hardest opponent any of us will ever face. Myself.

No, there will be no glory to chase; that’s long gone, but if I can “win” I may finally get to answer my question in the affirmative.

I’m hoping you might consider supporting my ride with a donation of your choice. Please go to my page for more information.