I was talking to Christina one day. This was a couple of years ago. I’ve known Christina for the better part of ten years. I started training her right after she had her second daughter, Corey. Like most women after a second kid, she thought she had put on a little weight. I heard the usual story when I went in. She was a basketball star, and all around good athlete. She spent the 1980s as an aerobics teacher. She just wanted to get back to where she was before. I’ve had few clients who’ve worked harder than Christina to get in shape. It wasn’t long before she’d done her first marathon. And not long after that she found full triathlon. She’s gone full tilt in it ever since. Christina’s body has morphed into the body of a fine athlete over the years. To give you a description, she has the basic body type of Dara Torres, the Olympic swimmer who seems to come back year after year.
Christina is ripped. She told me one day something. It totally baffled me, but in some weird way, I kind of understood. In her mind’s eye, she looked like the pros she saw in magazines. But when she sees pictures of herself crossing the finish line, she still feels like a fat oaf. Nothing could be further from the truth. Christina, like a lot of my other “aging athletes,” looks amazing. I told you that to tell you this. Like most people who live in Los Angeles, Christina comes from somewhere else. Specifically, she’s from Ohio. She met her husband Bill there. They moved together to California to find fame and fortune. Not to digress, but Bill did just that. Once a year the couple go to the Carolinas to hang out with old friends. Several couples they knew way back in the day rent a beach house for themselves and their kids. Recently they decided to stop that practice. The main reason being the friends they grew up with seem to have a problem with Christina. Was she being a jerk? Absolutely not. Was she acting out of line? Absolutely not. What she did do was show up. That seemed to be all it took for some of these other women. She would take time to swim, run or ride a bike. That alone is enough to make other people look at what they’re doing. It didn’t stop there. When the group hit the beach, Christina’s body looked better than it looked when she was 18. The other women didn’t fare so well. Every year she would come back, and sometimes even cry because of the way she was treated. I explained that she was simply holding a mirror up to these women. Working hard and keeping in shape, she showed them what was possible. They could no longer say to their husbands that they worked hard every day taking care of the kids. I applaud Christina and people like her. They keep the rest of us honest.
