Training History

My entire teen and adult life has been spent overweight.  Sometimes I was larger or smaller, but always a bit over what I should be.  I think I was fairly active as a child, I just liked to eat.  About 8-9 years ago I reached a high of probably 160-165 lbs, and I’d had enough.  I decided that I was going to start exercising to lose weight.

I started out walking and doing Tae-Bo videos in the living room of my apartment.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t exactly love it, either.  I dreaded every morning when my alarm clock would go off, but once I was able to drag myself out of bed and start Tae-Bo’ing I felt great!  It wasn’t just a workout, it was fun.

At some point within the first year I started exercising, I started to drastically increase my workouts.  I’m not sure if it was because I was getting results, or because of the endorphin rush (it was probably a little of both) but it definitely turned into an obsession.  I clearly remember at one point doing 45 minutes of Tae-Bo in the morning before work, walking a 15-minute mile 3x daily at work, then sometimes doing a second 45-minute Tae-Bo workout before I would race off to class.  Oh yeah, at that point I was working full time and also taking 3 classes per semester to get my A.A.

The second year, I settled into a more normal routine, but it still consisted solely of Tae-Bo.  By my 3rd year of living an active lifestyle I was confident enough to join a gym, and started going on a regular basis.  I did cardio and the typical strength training circuit that any trainer of a generic gym will teach you.  But I was still new enough to not know any better, and something was better than nothing.  I still loved the high of a good workout.

I continued on the same path for a few years, then stumbled across triathlons about 3 years ago.  I joined a training group and raced my first tri, and I’ve been hooked ever since.  I should also mention that about a year before that I fell in love with cycling.

Two years ago I came across a podcast called The Fitcast.  In the short two years I’ve been listening to it, my entire outlook on exercise and fitness has been transformed.  One day I’ll hopefully write a post about how they’ve transformed my life, but that’s for then and not for this History page.  I will say that everything that’s happened to Carrie’s Fit Life in the last 1.5 years (including the creation of Carrie’s Fit Life) is indirectly related to them.

If I’ve learned anything about myself in the last ten years, it’s that each year I fall more in love with health and fitness.  It rules my life, but I don’t think in an unhealthy way.  Well, maybe sometimes I go a little too far with training, but I’ve always said that there are much worse things to be obsessed with than fitness.  :)