What does being in “shape” mean to you?

What does being in “shape” mean to you?

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I often get the question, you must be in great shape, when people hear all the physical activity I do. Well like most things, it’s all relative. I would venture I’m more active than the average bear but not where I used to be. And I’m not being in shape is the same as being active.

I often compare myself to my former racing shape. That was a few years and a few pounds ago. And many hours of training. I’m not sure if it’s attainable or rather not what I’m looking for these days…

Being in shape came to mind while I was doing the “hilly” course of the Mad Trapper Series snowshoe race this weekend. You know you’re not pushing hard enough when you’re asking yourself what kind of shape you’re in while you’re snowshoeing up a mountain countless times. The only thing you should be asking yourself is how you will survive during these races!

I have pretty good cardio capacity these days with snowshoeing, running and loads of hockey. I’m just much heavier than my old Ironman weight so it weights on you (pun intended), especially on longer training runs and races.

You can see from the picture above that radical transformations can be achieved. It kinda happened to me. But’d I’d still argue that I was in shape while I played college football, it was just quite different. I couldn’t quite jog more than a lap of our field but I could  push a lot of weight around.

I’m probably a tad healthier these days than my football days but a lot also has to do with yoga, nutrition and sleep. It’s simply different.Different times and different goals, I was even talking about the good old days last night so it wasn’t all that bad…

To me these days, being in shape means being healthy and being able to run a half marathon in under 2 hours on any given Sunday…

So what does being in “shape” mean to you?

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