Calling on the Athlete Within
by Steve McGill
Five months ago, during a hospital stay in Huntersville, NC that lasted five days), when I was diagnosed with multiple blood clots, diabetes, and high blood pressure all on the same day, I had a lot of time to think about my life. The immediate thoughts, obviously, had to do with my health. I felt angry at myself for not taking care of myself, for abandoning my daily walking routine (out of laziness), for not controlling my sugar addiction, for ignoring the fact that diabetes and high blood pressure run in my family history. Anger fueled my transformation from sugar addict to sugar-free. My wife put me on a healthy diet, and I followed her every instruction. I started walking again, building up to four miles a day. I lost weight, to the point where I can now fit into clothes I haven’t worn in eight years. I began lifting weights 20 minutes a day to put some tone back in my muscles.
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Throughout my life I had always loved to run. Although running over hurdles was my passion in my teen and early adult years, I was one of the rare sprinter/hurdlers who loved to run far as much as I loved to run fast. So for me, transitioning into distance running in my thirties was not a difficult choice nor a difficult process. Chronic shin pain, a stress fracture in my right tibia, and probably an undiagnosed one in my left tibia (as that one often hurt just as much), as well as acknowledging that my competitive days as a hurdler were behind me, meant that running distance was the natural next step in my athletic journey. Running miles hurt less than sprinting even 50 meters full speed. So, throughout my mid-thirties through my late-forties, running distance was my thing, and it was how I stayed in shape and stayed feeling like an athlete. I ran 5Ks, 10Ks, half-marathons, and even ran two full marathons. I was running over 50 miles per week on a regular basis, sometimes getting up to as many as 70.
I remember when I finished my first 10K in downtown Raleigh, NC, running across the line and thinking to myself, I’m an athlete again. I was 38 or 39 at the time, and had successfully made the transition from athlete to coach, and of prioritizing others’ athletic journey over my own. But in that moment, I realized I could do both — I could coach and still compete. And even though I wasn’t competing in the hurdles any longer, competing in road races felt almost as invigorating. Nothing could replace hurdling, but road races, and training for them, came close.
Around when I turned 50 (I’m 59 now), I felt myself hitting an athletic wall. Even though I was staying consistent with running, I was finding it harder to go as far and to maintain the same pace as in previous years. Frustrated and confused, I allowed my running routine to become less consistent. During the school year, I’d take off weeks at a time, and weeks became months. During the summers, I’d get started back up again, but instead of running I decided to take walks, since I had put on weight and couldn’t run more than a mile or so without needing to pause for a break. So, from about age 53 to the present, walking has been my primary mode of exercise. As I mentioned in one of last month’s articles, I slacked off on the walking over the past two years, leading to a sedentary lifestyle that included eating a lot of sugary junk food. My mom passed away when I was 53, and, looking back, I think that had a lot to do with my loss of motivation to maintain healthy lifestyle habits. Before then, although I’d always had a sweet tooth, I would compensate with the vigorous long runs and then long walks. After then, I kind of stopped caring about getting out of shape and falling out of my routines.
So, in that sense, the health crisis I had back in April that led to my five-day hospitalization was the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to reevaluate. It forced me to decide whether I wanted to continue my downward spiral or make the changes necessary to return to full health. In the first week or so after leaving the hospital, I was making incremental progress in terms of walking, I was making rapid progress in terms of improving my diet. My blood sugar was dropping and staying at normal levels, to the point where I no longer needed to take some of the medicines I was on. My wife was focused on the blood sugar, to a degree where I became fixated on it as well.
One day about two months into my recovery, I checked my blood sugar after a long walk, and it was something like 109 after being in the 90s for a week straight. My wife explained that checking my blood sugar right after my walk was a bad idea because exercise causes blood sugar to go up, despite its long-term effect of helping it to go down. While I knew she was right, I also felt frustrated that I had to change the time of my walk in order to make sure the blood sugar reading stayed low. I liked to go for a walk immediately upon waking up, especially during the summer when I was trying to go outside before the hot sun became a major factor. That morning, I told myself, don’t think like a diabetic; think like an athlete. Be an athlete. Don’t just think in terms of getting your blood sugar down; think in terms of getting yourself in shape. The walk matters. The walk gets prioritized. If I have a busy day ahead of me, I have to figure out when I’m gonna get my walk in, because not walking is not an option. Later, I realized I could simply check my blood sugar before going out for my walk. But still, telling myself to think like an athlete opened up a door of possibility inside of me. I noticed that since I was getting in shape, losing weight, eating healthily, I had more energy. I didn’t need to take naps as often. I could spend more time grading essays without my eyes growing tired.
A couple weeks ago, while visiting my sister-in-law who lives in Wake Forest, I went for a walk in her neighborhood, which features a lot of rolling hills. During one downhill stretch, I decided to start jogging, just to see how far I could jog without stopping. I was able to go for 5:34 before I felt tired enough that I had to walk again. That was a start. My goal is to keep adding in jogging chunks during my walks, with the aim being to get to a point where I’m running again instead of walking. That may take a year, or two years. I don’t know. I might not ever get there. But I’m moving in that direction, thinking like an athlete, letting each day build on the next.
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