Dan Levesque, Manager of Wellness Services at the Bond Wellness Center, has been serving members on the fitness floor or somewhere nearby since before the doors of the place opened back in 2000. The Bond Wellness Center was his first place of employment after he completed his graduate studies at the University of New Hampshire and he’s been here ever since.
“I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m doing what I love and I’m getting paid for it,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed my whole time here. I’m never dreading Mondays and I’m never just looking forward to Fridays. I love what I do.”
With his Master’s Degree in Exercise Science, Dan started as an exercise physiologist in the Cardiac Rehab unit here, then became an exercise specialist and then the Coordinator of Wellness Services. As a manager now, he says his personal goal is still to balance the work he does between administrative tasks and working with the people. He fills in for instructors on the fitness floor, and he’ll do member assessments and stress testing in Cardiac Rehab.
“I like having the people contacts, with staff and with the members,” he said.
Shortly after starting his job, he and Carrie Levesque got married, bought a house and had three kids. That rewarding journey took its toll on Dan’s exercise routine, but both he and Carrie have found a way to make it work. He was once a competitive bicycle racer, performing in races all over the country. Lately he’s been focusing on long distance running events.
Was he always athletic? “I was a fat kid. Totally.”
What changed is he discovered, at the age of 12, that he loved the freedom bicycling gave him. Soon he was doing 25- or 50-mile rides. His body changed along with his lifestyle. By age 16, he was a serious racer, something he kept up through college.
Ironically, when he began his job at the Wellness Center–and then got married, bought a house and had children—the rigorous training the bike racing required fell by the wayside.
“But I’ve rediscovered my purpose and the joy of exercise through long distance biking,” he said.
And when Dan says long distance, he means it. How does 600k sound to you? That’s 375 miles! Dan explains that he once biked in what is called a Brevet—from just outside Boston to the town of Bennington, Vermont—and back! That was 29 straight hours of biking. “Well, I did stop to eat and use the bathroom,” he said.
Right now he’s concentrating on training for the Bay State Marathon in Lowell
Massachusetts in October, an event that is seen as one of the best for qualifying for the Boston Marathon. He ran that event last year, but a slight injury kept him from qualifying. Always on the lookout for the next challenge, Dan says after the Boston Marathon, he’ll probably try to do a triathlon, though he doesn’t consider himself a strong swimmer.
Dan has recently put together a Monadnock Community Hospital team for an event in September called Reach the Beach—a 24-hour running race from Cannon Mountain, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, over to Hampton Beach—210 miles! The team runs in segments. Each person will run three different times in segments of varying length, distance, terrain and times of day. Then they tag off with a team member and while he/or she is running, the rest of the team sleeps in a 15-passenger van, which catches up to the runner at some point.
“The race will be a first for everyone, except for one,” Dan said, of his team that includes several hospital doctors.
Through his 10 years of Wellness Center work, Dan has seen some incredible transformations among members and some inspiring ones as well. There’s a lung transplant patient who thought her life was at an end, but exercise has contributed to her new life. There are members who have transformed their whole bodies. There are several members with Multiple Sclerosis who inspire him and others.
“When I see them pushing themselves, challenging themselves, it’s inspirational,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of successes and it makes me proud to have this place be part of those successes.”
As he circulates on the fitness floor, members will often ask him questions about their aches and pains, or about the medications they’re taking. “Sometimes they’ve been diagnosed with a condition and haven’t asked all the questions they need to of their doctors,” Dan explains. “We can serve as an intermediary, by suggesting they call their doctor or talk to a physical therapist. We have a lot more freedom with our time than the usual doctor visit and we can help maintain that continuity between doctor and patient.”
His advice to anyone considering joining the Wellness Center or just returning to an exercise routine?
“You have to discover your motivation. If you know what your motivation is, then when that inevitable moment hits and you just don’t want to get over here to a class or to do your workout, you’ll push through that,” he said. “It never works if you’re doing it because you ‘ought to’, but it will work if you do it because you ‘want to’.”
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[...] Daniel Levesque wisely said that nobody will stick to an exercise plan until he/she finds their true incentive and comes to enjoy it so much that they won’t give it up. My prevailing thought as I gave up my membership back four years ago now, and as I approached returning here again, was, “I’m entirely too busy and too interested in other things to spend my time exercising.” [...]