This St. John’s lady left a cot to follow a Ironman dream — and it saved her life

Four years ago, Cheryl Myers didn’t even possess a bike or know how to swim, and her life was totally different.

“I didn’t do anything. I’d go to work, go home, we would eat, we would watch TV,” she said. “I was intensely overweight. we didn’t have any goals and had no drive.”

Myers, 40, has since lost over 100 pounds and credits one of a many tiresome jaunty races in a universe for turning her life around.

Her tour into a universe of triathlon started with a tiny dash in 2015; before perplexing to competition in a water, she initial had to learn how to swim.

“I was fearful of a H2O my whole life,” she said.

“My nephew, he was five, wanted me to go swimming with him … I was shocked — so we motionless to take adult float lessons.”

By what can usually be deliberate a cadence of fitness for Myers, her instructor incited out to be ultra-triathlon aspirant Ben Hayley. 

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Intrigued by a sport, Hayley decided to watch all a swimmers during a mass start of a St. John’s Triathlon that year.

“I had usually designed on staying for a open H2O swim, yet we stayed for a whole thing,” Myers said.

A month after she and Hayley started doing strength training in a gym. When a calendar flipped over to 2016, she bought a highway bike, then running shoes.

“Since we started a triathlon I’ve mislaid some-more than 100 pounds,” she said. “I’ve started to have goals.”

In Aug 2016 she finished a scurry competition during a St. John’s Triathlon. Her usually idea was not to finish last. 

She didn’t. 

That attainment pushed Myers to persevere some-more time to swimming, biking and running, with evenings on a couch, during that point, a apart memory.

Myers might have been losing weight, yet was also creation gains she never suspicion possible.

“I’m happier, we have some-more confidence. we used to travel around perplexing not to be seen. I spent many of my adult life perplexing to be invisible,” she said.

“Now … I’m a whole opposite person.”

Myers now surrounds herself with triathletes and even assimilated a internal Pancake Triathlon Club, a organisation focused on assisting athletes get faster while carrying a small fun.

“Even yet we had mislaid so most weight, we don’t demeanour like a standard triathlete, and we substantially never will,” she said. “I suspicion we would be laughed at. [But] everybody has welcomed me.… we have met people that we will be friends with for a rest of my life.”

Members of that organisation helped her sight to pull herself to a new spin by completing a Ironman 70.3 Eagleman competition in Maryland in June.

That means she swam 1.9 kilometres, biked 90 kilometres and ran 21.1 kilometres — and did it in a time of 6:46:30.

“There is a indicate in a run where we spin a dilemma and we can see a finish line. You can hear a song and we can see a crowds entertaining and we usually know that you’re so tighten and it’s a best feeling ever,” she said.

By Myers isn’t confident with completing a half-Ironman.

She has her sights set on a full distance: 3.9-kilometre swim, 180-kilometre bike float and a full 42.2-kilometre marathon.

That’s her 2020 goal. On Sunday she will line adult with some of a province’s best triathletes in a 35th St. John’s Triathlon.

Just 4 years ago, that finish line looked extremely distant away. But Myers has a new outlook, she says.

“Triathlon did save my life.”

Read some-more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cheryl-myers-inspires-with-triathlon-journey-1.5240414?cmp=rss