This past spring, 45-year-old JF Champagne completed his first half-marathon in an hour and 50 minutes, with the help of the team at FFF’s ByWard Market location.
That’s pretty good, considering he’s the same fellow who was told by a doctor 10 years ago that he’d likely be dead by the time his kids were 20.
Back then, JF wasn’t exercising, but he was travelling heavily for work, smoking and eating poorly. At 35, his blood pressure was already elevated. Considering his father had undergone a triple bypass surgery before the age of 60, JF knew he had to take action.
So he did. He hit the gym, ate better and won his greatest battle of all – he quit smoking.
“When you quit, you understand it isn’t one of those things where you can just go back and be a casual smoker,” he said. “You just have to turn away and never look back. It’s a constant battle.”
JF also got himself on a sustainable path to weight management, by melting the fat away by about a half pound per week. He understood that persistent effort over time was key – there are no magic pills.
But then he moved to Ottawa last year to take on a new role as head of a national industry association. With a new job came new stresses and a slide back to some bad habits. His nutrition suffered and the weight started to come back.
“You can go to the gym by yourself and self-motivate, and that lasts for a while, but I needed a challenge to get me challenged,” he said.
JF had run before in five and 10 km events. When a friend asked him to run the 20+ km half marathon at the Ottawa Race Weekend, JF embraced it as the challenge he needed to take action.
“That was the call for me to get back in shape,” he said. “But I knew I needed something more than the traditional gym. I didn’t have the know how to train to run distance.”
Last November, JF joined FFF and started working with trainers Luzia Jaeger Hintze and Jonathan MacDonald.
“When I first came here I wasn’t sold yet on the whole idea of one-on-one training, but you come to realize it’s a much more efficient way to do it,” JF said. “You get better results in much less time. You certainly don’t push yourself as much just by yourself.”
His goal was to run the half in 1:45, but he’s not complaining that he crossed the finish line in 1:50.
“It was easier than I thought it would be, I felt transported by the crowd,” he said. “You get to the end and see your time and go ‘wow, I could have done faster, I should go back.’”
Now that he’s crossed his first half marathon from his bucket list, JF has his sights set on more strength training at FFF to reach that 1:45 mark during this fall’s Army Run.
“There was a time when I would work out for an hour and a half at a time,” he said. “I would see results, but it was just too much time commitment. Here at FFF, I can see those results in only half an hour.”
