September 15, 2015
I'm on the front page of the SPORTS section!! Again, I sit here shaking my head and asking myself, "How did this happen?" I am dumbfounded! The article has 241 likes on the newspaper's website and has been shared 9 times on the newspaper's Facebook page - by perfect strangers. Totally dumbfounded.The article is at the bottom of this post.
It started one Friday evening when I came out of the Y after a swim workout. The phone rang and when I answered, a man explained that he was the sports editor of the Columbus (Indiana) Republic newspaper. He said he had heard about me and wanted to know if I would do an interview.
I think I just started giggling. That seemed so weird, kind of flattering, but weird. He explained that the article would not be about me, it would be about my journey and that the purpose would be to help others understand that it was possible to lose weight and get fit. Perfect. I said ok.
I thought that he would just ask a couple of questions right then, but he wanted to meet with me and offered to drive to me (about 45 miles away). I didn't have my calendar so we agreed that I would call him on Monday.
Monday came and I got busy and didn't call. The reporter didn't call me either and I wondered if maybe he had second thoughts. On Wednesday, I started feeling bad about not calling him like I said I would, so I did. He immediately put me at ease by saying something like, "I was hoping you would call." So we made a plan to meet at a town halfway between our two cities in a grocery store parking lot and then decide where to do the interview.
THE INTERVIEW
I was expecting a young, just-out-of-college journalist. The man that stepped out of the convertible sports car was someone my age. That reminded me that he was, in fact, the sports editor. He suggested that we go to the local high school's cross country course for a photo shoot. A photo shoot!!!? Oh my gosh! Luckily, I had planned to do a bike workout after the interview and had on my Dream Big bike jersey and bike shorts, so at least I looked the part!
The editor's name is Jay Heater and he was a pro. He immediately put me at easy by telling me how beautiful the cross country course was and suggesting that we walk a bit so I could see more of the course. All of a sudden, Jay Heater changed from being "the sports editor" who was about to interview me to "Jay," just a nice guy chatting.
Jay suggested that we do a photo of me running toward his camera. LOL. As I ran to the camera, I felt like I was on a set somewhere, shooting a commercial for Dream Big Triathlon Coaching! Maybe I was a model in a previous life because I kind of enjoyed it. Ha! Jay showed me the first couple of shots to prove that I was not going to look like a total idiot and then took some more photos with my bike.
When the photos were finished, we sat on some bleachers and the interview began. Jay started by asking me simple questions and then the questions started to dig a little deeper. It was interesting to watch him work. I always thought that reporters would have to have the same questioning skills as mental health counselors in order to get the interviewee to open up. That was 100% the case. Jay asked open ended questions, paraphrased, and self disclosed. One time, he asked a closed ended question to which I gave a single-syllable answer. He immediately rounded back with an open ended question. It was really quite impressive to watch him work. And it had the desired impact, I started talking freely, like I was chatting with someone who I had known for a long time.
Within the first five minutes, I told Jay that I had been dieting all my life and had tried a zillion different diets. He asked what made the difference this time. That was the opening that I needed to talk about the spiritual side of this journey. I said something like, "Well, you probably can't print this in the sports section, but I there's a spiritual part to my journey," and I told him how there was always someone "there" at every point of the journey when I needed encouragement or help with technique. I told him that I thought God was courting me.
I am not a "Praise the Lord" kind of person and have been trying to figure out how to tell people about God's grace in my own quiet way. Jay gave me that opportunity and the experience also showed me how it might come up naturally in a conversation. I was totally amazed at how easy it was. I think maybe God was at work here too.
I suspect Jay already had an idea of what the article would say before he interviewed me. Just like I had thought about what my messages might be, I'm sure that Jay, as a professional writer, had thought about what I might have to say, and therefore, what questions he should ask. I don't think I fit Jay's plan. I did not come from a family of overweight people. I did not dislike myself. I did not have health issues. I was just a happy, accomplished woman who had no boundaries with food.
In the days leading up to the interview, I wondered what messages I wanted to share. The Republic has a circulation of 22,500 and I knew this would be a wonderful opportunity to use my story to help others. I came up with three messages:
1. It is possible to lose a lot of weight (100+ pounds) without surgery or drugs.
2. In a matter of seconds, you can change someone's life with just a few kind words.
3. Something about God . . .
I have to admit, the interview was kind of fun. I think I'm an introvert in the true sense of the term - I get energy from internal reflection (which is probably why I created a blog) rather than big crowds. To talk about me for two hours was different, but I didn't dislike the attention. LOL.
It was also kind of interesting to see Jay's take on my story. He said that he had interviewed other people who had lost a lot of weight but no one my age. He said what he took from my story was that even older people can transform their lives. So that's another message that maybe I can take forward. And, it's a message that can apply to a lot of situations. You can be anyone you want to be at any time in your life. You just have to make the choices that go with who you want to be. Sometimes, that means pretending to be who want to be until you are that person. So my fourth message is now:
4. It is possible to transform your life at any age.
Jay also shared with me that if he didn't know my story, he would never have guessed that I was ever overweight. More kind words that make a difference.
SEEING THE ARTICLE
I drove to the grocery story in the town between my house and the newspaper's city to purchase a newspaper. I found a stack of papers and immediately saw that my photo was on the paper's front page banner. Oh my gosh. I picked up the top copy and turned to the sports page. OH MY GOSH!
The article was HUGE. It took up almost the entire page. I had envisioned my photo being postage-stamp size on the back page. There it was on the front page of the sports section! It was in color and big. I mean big. I was totally shocked. I picked up the entire stack of papers and went to check out. LOL. I told the cashier, as she took my money, "That's me!" She opened the paper to the sports section and said, "That is so cool!" All I could do was to keep shaking my head and saying, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" Oh my gosh!
Next, I went to a gas station to purchase a few more copies! Ha! I usually purchase my one guilty pleasure (Tootsie Roll Pop = 60 calories) when I'm in a gas station. But, I figured that I couldn't purchase newspapers feature my weight loss story and candy at the same time. :-)
I keep telling myself that it is just paper and ink. But there is something so affirming to see that someone else recognizes the hard work that went into my becoming a triathlete. That newspaper article was kind of like a trophy.
I called my coach and asked if he could meet me right away. I told him I wanted to give him a copy of the newspaper article but didn't say anything else. I rarely call him on the phone and have never asked to meet with him immediately. I think he could probably hear the excitement in my voice. He was in route to the YMCA so I met him in the Y's parking lot.
When he opened the paper and saw the article, I could see the "happy" on his face. Exactly how I was hoping he would feel. I found his quotes and read them aloud. That was such a nice moment. We are a team. Coach plans. I execute. Every PR and race that I win is also his win. I think we were both elated. Again, having the journey in print somehow gave it validity for both of us. Hard to explain.
I also drove to Next Generation Personal Training. While I don't train with NGPT now, I will always give NGPT credit for helping me get started with weight loss - teaching me how to each properly, creating a supportive environment, and showing me that overweight people can exercise. My success is also their success. I gave their founder a copy and got kind of choked up. Another nice moment.
THE CONTENT
I couldn't have been more pleased with the article. The article opens with the spiritual things I talked about - how so many "angels" helped me along the way and how a kind word from a total stranger can have such an impact on one's life. I was so appreciate of Jay's starting with those words. How many sports editors would start a front page article with words about God? Was am totally impressed. I also wonder if that took courage.
It's funny, but as I read the article, I felt like Jay wasn't writing his version of my story. He was writing my version of my story. Maybe that's just what good writers do, but I felt like it was a gift from Jay. It certainly was a gift whether he meant it to be or not.
He somehow worked in all of the things that were important to me. We talked about so many things during the interview. I'm not sure how he knew which were the important things to me, but he nailed it. He talked about how being healthy is just a matter of making sound choices over a period of time and that it starts small. He mentioned how most women my age never had a chance to play sports in school and may not know there is an athlete hiding inside of them. He mentioned Dream Big Triathlon Coaching and my coach's name. It was just perfect.
CONFIDENCE
The article helped build my confidence. I still have trouble thinking of myself as an athlete and when I do well, I think it must be a fluke. The article described me as "one of the nation's top triathletes" in my age group. It also quoted my coach as saying that I was a "top-tier" triathlete, and "I think the sky really is the limit for Sue." I still think those words don't apply to me, but it's kind of nice to roll them through my brain from time to time, (blush).
THE RESPONSE
241 people "liked" the article on the newspaper's website. Most of the other articles have two or three likes so 241 seems like a lot. Nine people shared the story on their Facebook page - total strangers! I am dumbfounded. I wonder why they "liked" it . . . Maybe they are angels saying, "Go girl!" Maybe they are Christians trying to tell Jay how much they appreciate him talking about God on the front page of he sports section. But maybe, just maybe, the article gave them a new vision of what is possible. Maybe, just maybe, that new vision will enable them to start on a journey of their own. That would be so cool!
Happy! Happy!
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The Columbus (Indiana) Republic
- Jay Heater, Sports Editor
Was it an angel riding a bicycle?
Sue Reynolds never will know for sure, but it certainly could have been some sort of benevolent celestial being sent by the Almighty to help her down the path toward a real world miracle.
It was three years ago when Reynolds would labor along the People Trail in Columbus, pushing her 300-pound body to its maximum with the hope of finding a healthier life.
It was a lonely battle, one that threatened to consume and defeat her. But at those moments, the angel would go riding past.
“It was this one woman who was a bike rider,” Reynolds said. “And every time she passed me, she would say, ‘You are looking really good.’
“That’s where the kindness comes in. I really felt like God was courting me. All this started happening to me, with people being so kind at just the right moment. It seemed that someone always had something nice to say.
“You know, it just takes two seconds, but you can change someone’s whole life. I never knew that woman’s name, and she never will know what she did for me.”
Two years ago, Reynolds and her family moved to Bloomington to be closer to their boat on Lake Monroe. Now 61, Reynolds returns to Columbus, where she lived on Chestnut Street from 1979 through 2012, but most people don’t recognize her.
That’s OK with Reynolds, who weighed 335 pounds three years ago when an unsuccessful attempt to tie her shoes pushed her into a different lifestyle. The current Reynolds weighs 141 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame and is one of the nation’s top triathletes in the 60-64 women’s age group.
“Every day now I do something that I couldn’t have done three years ago,” Reynolds said. “I can run up the stairs because I don’t have a disability anymore. I can buy clothes at a regular store.
“When I finally got to the point where I no longer was overweight, I didn’t know who I was. It seemed like I had been on a diet forever. I was lost, and now I’m an athlete. The hard part was thinking of myself as an athlete.”
Her story begins as a young girl growing up in Michigan without any significant weight difficulties. However, she grew up before Title IX changed the opportunities for girls to be athletes in school, so she didn’t pursue sports.
After getting her college degree at DePauw, and marrying her husband, Brian, and starting a family, she began to gain weight, a little at a time.
“I didn’t have boundaries with food,” she said. “I ate for any reason and eating was part of everything I did. I had no reason to worry about nutrition.”
Ironically, Reynolds coached “just about every sport” as she became a teacher after college and spent time working at Southwestern (Shelby), South Ripley, Central and Indian Creek schools. Although she was around athletes, she didn’t consider herself to be one and was OK with her significant weight.
“It was just who I was,” she said.
The years passed and her two boys, Mike and Andy, graduated from Columbus North High School and began their own adult lives. However, Brian, Mike and Andy all “nagged” Sue to get healthier and lose weight.
At age 59, when many people are looking to climb on the couch, Sue Reynolds decided to get off it.
“There were so many things I couldn’t do,” she said. “I couldn’t get into a booth at a restaurant. I couldn’t sit on an airplane. If I had a business meeting and it involved walking a block, I couldn’t go.
“But being overweight is not an illness. It is reversible.”
She walked outside her Chestnut Avenue home and walked to the next driveway. That was enough. Then a few days later, she went to the next driveway down. She kept adding a little distance.
“Then one day I walked to the mall,” she said. “The only way to get home was to walk back. I was still 300 pounds at the time, and it probably was too much for me. Everything hurt.”
But she did it, and her sons urged her to try walking a 5K.
She agreed and decided on a 5K race in Lexington, Kentucky, the Krispy Kreme 5K Challenge. She still laughs at the name.
“I was so scared,” she said. “I called the director of the race and told him that I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. I knew I would be the last one to finish.”
Long after most of the runners had gone home, Sue Reynolds reached the finish line. “They announced on the public address system, ‘Sue Reynolds has finished.’ I felt like I had won the Boston Marathon.”
She went forward, joining a “Next Generation” fitness class. “I think I had a lot of courage,” she said. “I had a saying, ‘Pride go away.’ Who wants to go to an exercise class and jiggle? But everyone there was like me.”
Eventually, she started thinking about a triathlon. “I didn’t know anyone who did triathlons,” she said. “But I knew I could swim the breaststroke, and I could do a 5K. I was taking a spin class.”
Her first triathlon came in March of 2013, an indoor triathlon at Indiana University. The cycling was done on a spin bike, so that made her comfortable. She swam in a pool and ran 30 laps on a track.
Every lap she ran, the young volunteers cheered for her.
She then entered the Indianapolis Sprint Triathlon at Eagle Creek later that summer. “That’s when I fell in love with it,” she said.
If she was going to spend her time learning to be a triathlete, she needed help. So Reynolds hired Bloomington’s Brant Bahler, a 29-year-old accomplished triathlete and instructor.
Did Bahler expect that Reynolds, still in the mid-to-high 200-pound range, could be a competitive triathlete.
“No, not even close,” Bahler said. “But I get a lot of people who just want to better themselves. Sue just wanted to live a healthier life, and I don’t think either of us felt that she could become a top-tier triathlete.
“But through the course of the first year we spent together, she was willing to listen and learn. We worked together as a team, and she started to see her progress continue to snowball. She wrapped her life around her goals.”
That meant make huge changes in things such as nutrition.
“My saying is to ‘Dream Big,’” Bahler said. “I think the sky really is the limit for Sue. She is a good reminder that you can’t look at a person and determine where they can get to. It is very fulfilling as a coach to see what Sue has accomplished.”
At this year’s USA Sprint Triathlon National Championship on Aug. 9 in Milwaukee, Reynolds placed 11th in her 60-64 age group. Her time of 1 hour, 29 minutes, 11 seconds was accomplished with personal bests in the 750-meter swim, the 20K cycling portion and the 5K run. At 61, her times are getting better.
She enjoys sharing her success, hoping that other people might attempt a similar transformation.
“One of my messages would be that it is possible to lose weight the old-fashioned way,” she said. “By making good choices.
“I just people to know that it is possible. I never dreamed that I could stand in front of a mirror and flex my muscles. But it takes patience, and you’ve got to stick with it. Here I am.”
Now she looks at her life differently.
“I changed from a recreational athlete to a competitive athlete,” she said. “I have that fire in my belly.
“I suspect that a lot of women my age have athletes living inside of them.”
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