It is never too late.
I am Nick Wallington — founder of Beyond™, health and fitness coach, and a fellow resident of Battersea Power Station.
I did not arrive at this work through a textbook. I arrived through thirty years of living it — the ambition, the injury, the success, the collapse, and the long, deliberate rebuild that followed.
At ten years old I watched my first Ironman triathlon on television and decided immediately that I wanted to be a triathlete. By eleven I had entered my first cycling race — and won. By my mid-teens I was the top junior national amateur cycling champion in Bermuda, training toward the Tour de France.
By seventeen I was finishing ten-mile time trials within one minute of the British record.
The Olympics felt possible. Professional racing felt closer still.
Years of cycling ten miles each way to school with a heavy backpack had been silently herniated two discs in my spine. The damage was misdiagnosed for years. By eighteen I could barely feel my right leg.
At twenty-two I had spinal surgery. One disc had attached itself to the sciatic nerve and grown around it. The surgeon had to stop mid-operation to consult colleagues internationally — none had encountered anything similar. The procedure caused significant nerve damage. I spent three weeks in intensive care and a full year learning to walk again.
I was told I would never play sport again.
I did not accept that. But it took me a long time to prove it wrong.