A Chatham woman spent 18 months losing 105 pounds and one year later she’s looking to head to London, England to compete in the Obstacle Course Racing World Championships.
Jennifer Tape-Samson was diagnosed a few years ago with fibromyalgia – a syndrome which affects the muscles and can cause chronic pain, fatigue and sleeping issues – and was told in a seminar how exercise could help with her situation.
“I was pre-diabetic at that point. I just thought, ‘I’ve got to do something here because this sucks,’” she said.
The 35-year-old bought a personal training package at the local YMCA on a month-to-month basis, even though she “couldn’t really afford it.
“I didn’t go on any diets, like keto or any of that crap,” she said, though she did monitor her calorie intake each day. “I just ate better food and less of it and I still had treats along the way. I didn’t starve myself.”
When Tape-Samson lost 45 pounds, the YMCA made a video of her to show how much weight she had lost and she kept up her routine.
She said a big credit for losing the next 60 pounds was when she found out she loved running.
“I just started running a lot and that helped the weight come off, but I felt so much better and actually, I was able to go off any medication that I was on for fibro and so I currently don’t take any pain medication or anything like that other than just Tylenol,” she said.
By last October, she said she had dropped the 105 pounds and she has kept them off since.
After signing up for several races, both locally and elsewhere in Ontario, a friend suggested she compete in one of the Foam Festival races held across Canada. Participants go through courses where they are sprayed with foam, but there are also obstacles like mud pits and rope climbing.
Tape-Samson said she enjoyed it so much, she started searching the Internet for other types of obstacle races and made a “pact” with herself at the beginning of the year to compete in several of these events.
After finishing in the Top 10 of one of those races – the Spartan Race – she discovered she had qualified for the world championships.
At first, she said she had no intention of actually going, but her friends encouraged her to go for it.
She launched a GoFundMe page at www.gofundme.com/send-me-to-theworld-championships to raise money for her flight and accommodations.
The race is 15 kilometres long and includes climbing over obstacles, swinging by rope, carrying heavy bags up and down hill and crawling under barbed wire fence.
With Chatham’s ground being so flat, Tape-Samson said she has had to be creative in how she trains.
She said she has spent a lot of time running up and down the stairs at her home and underneath one of the bridges over the Thames River. The racer also fills her backpack with heavy materials and runs around town.
Tape-Samson said Canada is so underrepresented in the championships that she hasn’t been able to find a Team Canada shirt to wear. She said hopes to use some of the funds from her online campaign to have one made.
The race is a way to represent both her country and Chatham-Kent, she said.
“We don’t live in the greatest healthy place,” she said. “People are overweight and there’s a lot of chronic illness and I just want to represent the people to say, ‘You can do it, maybe not to this extreme, but just the little things are what help you.’”
Tape-Samson said she considers dealing with fibromyalgia to be a full-time job. She also works full-time as a registered practical nurse at Chatham-Kent Hospice and is raising two children.
She said despite her weight loss, her condition still presents many barriers and she does have bad days. A doctor has told her fibromyalgia won’t affect the longevity of her life, but it will affect its quality, she said.
“You see so many people die young and I just want to live my life and feel the best I can because we never know when our time is next.”
The world championships are held Oct. 19-21.
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