One More Step by Bonner Paddock

Author:Bonner Paddock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

9

Swim. Bike. Run.

The Oakley headquarters looked like a cross between a spaceship and a medieval fortress. Passing through its cathedral-sized steel entrance was both inspiring and intimidating. At reception I asked for Greg Welch and waited for him in one of the fighter-pilot ejection seats in the lobby. He came out to meet me, then led me down a corridor of dark mysterious rooms into his office.

“So, we’re really going to do this?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“You’re crazy.” He laughed.

“Yep.”

“I’m busy. Okay, mate?” Welchy (as I quickly came to call him) started. “I’ll write you out a schedule every week, but you need to follow it. I can’t teach you how to work out, the proper way to run or swim, or how to ride a bike. You need to figure that out on your own, get the right people. You need to join a swim program. You need a trainer. I’ll coach, but I can’t be there every second to wipe your bum. You have to become your own coach, your own doctor, and your own nutritionist. I’m here to set the guidelines, but you have to know everything yourself. Okay?”

I nodded, and he continued.

“We will work you up in stages. If you got a job in a bank, you wouldn’t start as the big manager, right, mate? No. You’d start as a bank teller, and you’d climb the ladder from there.”

The first part of my training, Welchy explained, would simply be to get my body and muscles familiar with the three disciplines (swimming, running, biking) and to see how they handled the pressure. If there was something I couldn’t do because of my cerebral palsy, he wanted to know right away.

“Don’t mistake tired or lazy for inability,” he said. “Because I know the difference.” He gave me a look and another laugh.

On his computer, he showed me a training schedule he had drawn up for my first week.

“S is for swim,” he explained, really getting down to the basics. “B is bike. R is run. W is for weights, meaning core and plyometrics.”

There were a lot of workouts, two to three a day, but it all seemed to make sense, and it seemed very doable. Then he punched through a list of notes he’d made brainstorming.

First: Consistency was everything. I couldn’t do the same quantity of training that a normal person could do. I had basically been walking around with the equivalent of an injury my whole life, so we had to go for a slow, steady build, allowing time for my muscles to recover.

Second: My posture was terrible. I needed custom orthotics for my shoes and a bike suited to the way I held my body. For equipment, Welchy needed my sizes (shoe, shirt, waist, and height) and ten copies of my documentary to set me up with sponsors and to get the best gear (free of charge).

Third: Nutrition would be key. A major part of succeeding in any endurance event is figuring out the right combination of calories to keep you energized throughout the race, but at Kona getting the nutrition right was essential.

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