Before and after

I'm writing this under the influence of muscle relaxants and god knows what else thanks to a mega-migraine this morning. My spell check might explode with the corrective effort this post requires. I can honestly not blame computer error this time around. I apologize ahead of time.

This concerns the New Year's resolution to lose weight. I assume this is a popular one. (A good writer would have some sort of statistic credited to some researcher or another but I don't.)

As triathletes, weight loss might not be precisely our resolution but dollars to doughnuts it's a close relative. Trying for Kona? Faster bike time? Finish a sprint tri? You don't have to be a high-strung overacheiving triathlete to know that weight is a factor to accomplish any of these.

But before putting those Peter Reid (old school) or Chrissie Wellington pictures on your refridgerator, consider the before/after photos of people who've lost an amazing amount of weight.

I love these pictures. Here are people who've lived their entire lives being the kid/adult who instantly garners doubt from their peers and they turn it around and passive-aggressively rub it in their peers smug faces. I can't even give up caffeine without whining.

I can't fathom how hard this must be. They change their psychology, their determination and I-don't-know-what-all else.

An added bonus is when these people embrace exercise, including triathlon. How pure is their joy upon finishing. There's no snobbery about bikes, no excrutiating analyses about carb percentages vs. endurance. Their finishes are in their most basic form - a victory so innocent that I and most of the athletes I know will never know again. They are persistent, train for a goal loftier than my own and operate on a reward system far greater than mine.

I wish I could tap into their resolve and use it for my own (evil) plan to get to Kona.

So here's to resolutions that are way more likely to happen than my promise to get organized, become the first female president or an airline pilot. I'm still going after Kona.