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For author, sweat = bliss
Elite athlete Christopher Bergland preaches exercise
to the masses
By
Jim Buzinski
Outsports.com
Ultra-endurance athlete Christopher Bergland has never taken
shortcuts.
Openly gay,
he is the three-time winner of the Triple Ironman race
(7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike, 78.6-mile run) and holds the
world record for number of miles run on a treadmill in 24
hours (153.76 miles). The treadmill run literally almost
killed him. So, when it came time to write a book, "The
Athlete's Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss," his
first manuscript would not be the Cliff Notes version -- it
registered at 4,000 pages, "most of it single-spaced," he
said.
"You've
done it again, Chris," he remembers himself thinking at the
time, after spending five months isolated in Provincetown in
2005 writing it. He turned in 1,000 pages to his editor at
St. Martin's Press and at publication this June it came in
at a svelte 340 pages.
The
result is a highly entertaining, informative, accessible,
insightful and practical guide to fitness, health and life
in general from an elite athlete who never preaches down to
his readers, many of them likely to be weekend warriors or
couch potatoes.
Bergland,
41, has run the Badwater Ultramarathon, 135 miles of hell
through Death Valley in the middle of summer, three times. A
10-mile run for him is the equivalent of a stroll around the
block for most people. Yet the goal of "The Athlete's Way"
is not to make the rest of us into super athletes, but
rather to tap the athletic potential in all of us, no matter
how advanced.
Bergland,
who lives in Manhattan, is an engaging tour guide. The book
is not a dry recipe of how-tos. The reader gets to know the
author -- from his days as a depressed, cynical and
drug-using gay teen, through his bourgeoning athletic
successes and to his latter years that saw him deal with the
stress and trauma of being mugged in a Manhattan park.
"The person
I want to read this book is someone who doesn't like
exercise," Bergland told Outsports. "That would be my No. 1
mission, as sort of a zealot to convert people who don't
enjoy exercise into people who seek exercise. I try and make
it very seductive and enticing."
The
subtitle, "Sweat and the Biology of Bliss," is fitting.
"Sweat equals bliss," he said. "Sweat actually makes you
feel really good and is a pleasurable experience and I'm
going to prove that to you, the reader." He calls breaking a
sweat, "the passport to join the athlete's way culture,"
adding, "anyone who seeks exercise regularly with intent is
an athlete. The athlete's way and athletic mindset is a code
I strive for."
 The book is
laid out on 12 chapters. The beginning deals with his
personal story, then delves into the biology of sweat and
the brain. It ends by focusing on all aspects of training,
from diet to sleep to stretching to types of exercise. The
son of a neuroscientist, Bergland explains the science of
exercise. "The book brings neuroscience to the mainstream
public and that I knew I had enough credentials to be
considered an expert in the field," he said.
"I know I'm
a freak … but I also started where you are at 17," is his
answer to those who feel intimidated by the thought of
starting and maintaining an exercise program. The book
details an eight-week program, and he encourages newbies to
"take baby steps." His minimum amount of weekly exercise is
120 minutes.
"It's not
too late too late to start you need to do it for yourself,
your loved ones and your kids," he said. "You need to take
care of your body because it will be too late if you don't.
Start today."
He is not a
Puritan when it comes to diet, saying he still partakes of
fast food and donuts when the cravings strike. "I have no
dietary rules whatsoever, none, zippo," he said. "The only
rule I have is calories in, calories out. I don't forbid
foods, I know what's healthy and myself I make 75% every day
good choices without being neurotic. And then there's
leeway."
He breaks
down weight loss in a simple way. "You can begin to assume
that 3,500 calories is a pound of fat and if you are 10
pounds overweight, you need to do two things," he said. "You
need to bump your caloric expenditure up, you need to burn
250 calories a day and cut 250 calories a day. Find places
where you can cut 250 calories without feeling deprived. If
you continue to do that, you'll flip the table that caused
you to be 10 pounds overweight."
Among the
best parts of the book are the hundreds of inspirational
quotes sprinkled throughout the text. He quotes people as
diverse as Einstein, Sir Francis Bacon, Tina Turner, Helen
Keller, Wayne Gretzky and Gen. George Patton, using
aphorisms that are funny, inspirational or insightful.
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without
losing enthusiasm," is one from Winston Churchill. In
typical Bergland fashion, he compiled the quotes from
thousands he had saved on index cards over many years.
A new path through exercise
If Bergland
is an evangelist for the power of exercise, it's easy to
understand since it changed his life. He discovered sport at
17 and used it "to pull myself up and get back in the game
of life," he said. "I went from being a really depressed and
kind of jaded and cynical kid -- I used a lot of drugs and
alcohol -- and dealing with being gay in a really uptight
boarding school. But that summer I kind of metamorphosized,
not only physically, but my brain changed. I went from being
very cynical to being very optimistic and ambitious and
eager to seize the day. Exercise transformed my perspective
on the world and gave me the confidence as a gay teenager to
be my own person and to have a lot more resilience and like
a spine of steel."
Bergland
went on to be a highly success endurance athlete, called by
one writer "the greatest athlete you've never heard of." In
the book he breaks down the number of miles he has run on a
treadmill since 1984 and comes up with 50,000. In addition
to his wins in the Triple Ironman races, he has run in
dozens of regular Ironman races and even won a gold medal in
the triathlon at the Gay Games in New York in 1994.
Despite his
successes, Bergland, still lean and very fit at 6-1 and
about 170 pounds, writes that "many people think that
ultra-endurance sports are crazy. Even though I loved doing
them, I have to agree. … The physical strain on the body is,
in fact, probably bad for you. My joints are fine, but my
kidneys have been pushed to the verge of shutdown a few
times. Twenty to 60 minutes a day is good for you, but
running nonstop for 24 hours is not. I did it because it was
my calling -- my life's passion."
It was a
passion that nearly killed him. Bergland gave up competing
after making the Guinness Book of World Records with his 24
hours nonstop on a treadmill on April 3, 2004 (another
athlete tried to beat Bergland's 153.76 miles this June, but
failed). His feat earned him the record but also landed him
in the hospital with kidney failure. It was a wakeup call.
"I had sort of achieved everything I had wanted as an
athlete to the point where raising the bar any higher was
becoming self-destructive," he said.
Bergland
then dove headfirst into the book and his obsessiveness led
him to what he called his "meltdown phase" in October 2005
after five months of living like a hermit in P-Town, writing
hundreds of pages a day. On Cape Cod, he had his second
major bout of depression, his first since a teenager. He
reached out to his family and friends, who provided him with
support and a valuable lesson. "The message of my book about
the importance of community came from this isolation" while
writing the book, he said.
A second
traumatic event that tested him came in August 2003 when he
was mugged by three teens while walking back from dinner in
Stuyvesant Park, an event he writes about in harrowing
detail. "I was like a punching bag at their disposal, face
down at first and then curled up in a fetal position getting
kicked primarily in the torso and head. … It felt like being
in an industrial washing machine with about eight cinder
blocks." Bergland supplies an apt quote in this section from
football coach Woody Hayes -- "There's nothing that cleanses
the soul like getting the hell kicked out of you."
The muggers
got away with "a pack of spearmint Dentyne gum and a $5
bill, " he writes, and Bergland went to the ER but amazingly
had no brain damage or debilitating injuries. Deciding not
to let fear rule him, Bergland journeyed back to the place
in the park where the mugging had occurred. "Every day for
weeks," he writes, "I went out of my way to go back to that
slab of stone to stand on it, alone, look around, and
proceed home. It was like a pilgrimage, a very therapeutic
one."
Today,
Bergland works as a manager for Jackrabbit Sports, a running
and fitness store in Manhattan, and also as a representative
for Kiehl's, which makes skin and hair care products. He
went to Death Valley this month for the Badwater
Ultramarathon, not as a runner but as a Kiehl's rep.
Single,
Bergland will have a major life change this October when he
becomes a father. He is having a baby with a straight female
friend through in vitro fertilization. He plans to split his
time between New York and the Bay Area, where the mother and
child will live.
He admits
that he has to rewire himself and "learn to hang out." Not
many babies are up for a 135-run through the desert. But not
even fatherhood will slow down Bergland from being an
advocate for his "sweat equal bliss" philosophy.
"I hope
that this book in its own way inspires people and not only
in sports, but raises the bar so they can push against their
own limits and lead a life they can be proud of."
"The Athlete's Way"
website
Christopher
Bergland's website
Bergland's e-mail
July 24,
2007 |
