Janice Legere Member of the Month
Congratulations to Janice, who is our Member of the Month for August!
Janice is coming up on her 2-year member anniversary with Momentum, and it’s been quite a journey!
Like many people, injuries have been a substantial barrier to Janice’s fitness. After her second hip replacement in 2015, she started training at Momentum as soon as the physiotherapist said ‘go’. Determination clearly runs through her veins as she started training with Coach K twice a week. They very gently focusing on balance and minimal strengthening to start her on her fitness journey again.
For a woman who used to compete in sprint triathlons and would cycle 45km home from work on the regular, she was not going to let a hip replacement (or two) get in her way. Since Janice isn’t allowed to run ever again, she signed up for 3 duathlons. Focusing only on swimming and cycling, she was ready to compete this summer. She spent the winter training with Coach K’s Blast Club and the World Tour Cycling until she broke her shoulder skiing over March break this year and had to pull out of the duathlons. Talk about bad luck!
But like we said – determination runs in Janice’s veins.
Now, four and a half months after her surgery, she’s in the same great shape as she was before her ski injury. “I had such a high fitness level when I injured myself, that if it wasn’t for my upper body strength, I could have been looking at a much worse injury or fracture.”
“Nobody asks for an injury after you’ve just had two. So I said to myself, ‘Okay, what am I supposed to learn from this?’. For me, it was really about learning that there are certain things that I love doing – like skiing. But I’m 55 years old, so I can’t go at the same level as I used to go when I was 35. Fitness is really different from what I thought fitness was. Kristina has worked really hard at helping me to accept how fit and strong I really am in this body, and helping me to love this body, but also understand my limits.”
A recent hiking retreat in Utah led Janice to discover her love for hiking. At the hiking retreat, she learned about the concept of Mindful Living – the acceptance that movement is a part of human life, and that you need to find movement that you love and you need to do it every day. When she returned from the retreat, she joined the Momentum Hike Club and jumped right in with the group!
“Momentum has created a real community here, so when you go places in town you’ll see people from the gym, or from Hike Club, and you actually make friends through all of these connections. For a small town girl, it’s really nice to feel like I’m part of the community.”
Although Janice has set fantastic goals with her duathlons, she’s also setting goals for more practical parts of her life.
Janice recently received her private pilot’s license and has been flying all over. One thing that she has to do now is to check the fuel on top of the wing of the plane. This has been challenging for her because of her hips and shoulder injuries. Through her training sessions with Coach K, she’s now gaining the strength she needs to comfortably and confidently climb up on that plane. This is a very practical goal for her fun, new lifestyle!
And of course, she won’t stop there. She’ll be signing up for her next duathlon in the summer of 2018, and you better believe that we’ll be there cheering her on at the finish line!
Thank you, Janice, for sharing your story, and congratulations on being named Momentum’s Member of the Month!
