Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Stick with Exercise!!

I wanted to highlight a special fibro in the CF community named Mike Price. This dude has incredible determination and is out to do things that have never been done before by members of the CF community. If you ever get a chance to talk with him, you'll be super impressed with his positive attitude and go get em spirit. He's the perfect role model for younger (and older) fibros and cysters out in the community!

He recently responded to a post on CysticLife about exercise and whether to limit it because of CF. This woman's doctor basically said that exercise was different for those of us with CF and that we shouldn't "push it". HOG WASH!!!!

Here's Mike's response:

I'm currently training for an Ironman 70.3 triathlon. A 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, then 13.1 mile run. It's the best thing that could have ever happened to me. When I first started swimming, riding, and running it really sucked because I had no endurance and I got winded very quickly. It takes time and it can be painful but you will get stronger you just have to stick with it.

When I was in high school I thought the mile would be the death of me and I'd never run anything further than that in my entire life. Last September I ran a half marathon in 2:31:43, it's not the fastest time but I still beat a lot of people.

Even though we have CF we can still do anything anybody else can do our training is just going to be a little harder and we'll have to train a little longer, but we can do it. The biggest thing you have to learn is patience when it comes to endurance with exercise it takes us a little longer to build it up. Stick with exercise, it will only benefit you.

See what I mean? This guy doesn't take "no" for an answer. He's not going to let some faulty cells in his body determine what he can or cannot do. We need more fibros and cysters like this out in the community! Great thing is, that wouldn't be a far cry if we would just pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and say "enough is enough!!!!".