In the Summer of 99, whilst running the 100 meters for my local Athletic Club, I was ‘discovered’ by a Great Britain coach and touted as the next big thing in Paralympic sport. Within 3 months I had won my first Gold medal within international competition and found myself on a plane to represent my country in the I.S.O.D Disability World Championships in Barcelona.
Finishing 4th in the Worlds, I was ranked top 5 in the world for the Sydney 2000 Paralympic games. A re-occurrence of a torn quad injury in the Semi finals of the 100 meters, I limped over the line, in tears, my dream of gold ripped from me.
My subsequent loss of lottery funding (a sort of bursary that pays for all living expenses so I was able to invest my time into training and not working) was taken from me and I was out of the team as spectacularly as I had entered into it 18 months prior.
With no financial backing, I committed to train full time. I hit the gym and track 12 times per week, I put on hold using my First Class Honours Degree and I exhausted ALL my savings to put myself back into contention….and it worked…body fat of 7%, very lean and muscular – I got myself into fantastic shape. Constantly proving myself as a world class athlete on the track through my times over 100 meters I was awarded a place back on the Paralympic Team and Lottery funding for the 2002 IPC World Championships in Lille, France.
I blitzed the World Class field at the start of the 100m before being ran out right at the end. I knew this would mean loss of funding again. With no money in the bank I was forced to ‘retire’.
Within a year of my ‘retirement’ I had put on a stone and a half, my healthy lifestyle had got replaced with junk food and alcohol. My active lifestyle became more sedentary. 2 years on I suffered with depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
In 2004 I watched friends compete in the Athens Paralympics and I promised I would make Beijing, but it wasn’t to be. By Beijing I had won the battle against depression and OCD but my weight had also ballooned to over 14 stone.
Last year I spoke to an old friend in the Paralympic team and my British sprint record which has stood for 9 years has never been beaten.
I dream of London 2012, racing in front of a home crowd of 60,000 Britons, but in reality working full time and being 36 by the time of those games, it will be difficult, but not unmountable.
Despite this, I have never turned away from a challenge, my aim is very simple and clear….if I can be in a similar same shape as I was before the depression, before the binge drinking and eating, I will have proved to myself that I am a winner despite the odds.
So…I improved my diet (mainly by cutting out bread and booze), began cycling to work, started weights and running. I have enjoyed success and failure, losing and gaining weight. My best weight loss to date saw me down to 12 stone 8, however at that weight I started getting ill with one thing after the other; my training stopped, my weight returned. After reading this website, it makes sense why! I am always on the go with a very stressful teaching job and I constantly feel tired. My parasympathetic nervous system never gets chance to do its job; it is always in submission to the sympathetic nervous system.
I have a picture of me taken shortly before the Paralympics, it shows my lean, defined body. That picture is my inspiration to return my body to where it was. I have most of the pieces to the puzzle in place to do this….most importantly the right attitude. Double Edged Fat Loss looks like it is the final piece to a puzzle that has had me confused for some time and one that I am extremely confident will have me realising my goal to be in the shape I need to be and who knows, even contention for one final moment of glory on the World Athletics stage.