Always Moving Forward: The EPIC Story of Benjamin Weaver (and others)

The world is quiet. It’s dark; illuminated in patches by early morning moonlight and the sepia glow of old street lights. Even the birds are silent, clinging to the last hour of sleep. In the darkness, on the corner of an industrial back road, the lights turn on in the front half of an old warehouse. The iPhone that reads 4:40 a.m. is the same that breaks the tranquil silence of the pre-dawn world. Connecting to the bluetooth speaker it blares: “Working nine to five, what a way to make a living!” as Benjamin Weaver sets up the equipment for his personal training class that begins in 45 minutes. These classes, or EPIC, are Weaver’s personal coaching and training business, and a product of a winding journey.

In the warehouse gym, his clients know him as their trainer, an elite ironman---triathlete---endurance athlete, a colleague, and in some instances an old team or class mate. His radiant demeanor complimented by his wealth of knowledge, experience, and expertise are apparent to anyone fortunate enough to endure a few weeks of his torture...I mean classes. But what many don’t know, are the rigorous commitments behind the Ben Weaver they experience every day at the gym.

For Weaver, Dolly Parton’s 9-5 anthem is a rather ironic staple of his daily Road Trip Songs playlist on Spotify. His endeavors couldn’t be further from a typical 9-5 --- living for the weekend --- existence. His days begin at 3:30 AM, with breakfast meticulously prepared, calculated, and spaced out prior to lunch. His hourly classes with 6-8 patrons begin between 5 and 5:30 and, with clean up, end around 10 AM.

That’s when the day gets really interesting.

Instead of basking in stereotypical post-work downtime, Weaver begins his daily regimen of Triathlon training. Come October, he will compete in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, an honor he earned after qualifying back in 2019. Right after personal training ends, Weaver heads out the door for a quick swim or a run depending on the day. “If it’s a run day, it could be anywhere from an easy four mile recovery run, or an eight mile more intense one. Swimming, I will typically do anywhere from three to four thousand yards, which takes around 45 minutes to an hour,” Weaver says.

This “easy” session leads into lunch and desk time for Weaver. This is when he puts his coaching hat on. Aside from morning classes, Weaver’s EPIC consists of personal coaching for 15-16 other endurance athletes. His hands-on coaching includes daily data sheets for clients, planning their lives around training and racing, and on some occasions, joint endurance sessions. “While I eat lunch I typically am at my desk for a couple hours corresponding with my clients. I check all of their daily logs,” says Weaver.

By early afternoon, Weaver gets back into training mode and heads out for his second session of the day. This time it’s cycling. As Weaver puts it, there is not one typical ride, but rather a handful of different options. Some are light and a quick two hours, others are intense and take upwards of three and a half. “My rides all have a different purpose, and different intensities,” Weaver says, “I train a lot by myself. If I train with people, it’s usually a client and it is with intention. Maybe I need to help them navigate a course, or make sure their skills on the bike are where they need to be, things like that.” In addition to these daily totals, Weaver carves out time for strength training a few times a week to help support his needs as an endurance athlete back in the gym.

As Weaver or his clients enter EPIC, a whiteboard on the back wall reads “Kona Log” in big black letters. The board says things like 526 miles ran, 3595 miles biked, 197,465 yards swam, 268 training sessions this year, and a list of upcoming races. It shows the progress and the dedication required to perform and compete at the highest level in endurance sports. But what it doesn’t say is the real story of how Benjamin Weaver got to where he is now.

You see, Weaver’s training has always had a purpose. Right now you may think it’s obvious. Prepare for Kona. And before that, cycling or running...racing. But for a person forced to develop the depth of Benjamin Weaver, those purposes are slightly shallow in their own right.

Weaver’s training, from the very beginning, has truly been about one thing.

Survival.

But before we can understand that, we first have to understand Weaver’s past.

Growing up in a four-boy household, Weaver was the youngest of the four. His older brother and Weaver played sports, while dad coached, and the middle two were more into the outdoors scene.

Weaver, a “high talent, low work ethic” jock, coming off all state high school careers in football and baseball, was flying high entering his freshman year at Purdue University. His scholarship to a Big Ten school not only afforded his education, but gave his family an ultimate sense of pride in their son. “My scholarship, not only literally allowed for my education to Purdue University, but it was also a big deal to my family and meant a great deal for us,” says Weaver.

This was especially true for Weaver’s father, whom he was especially close with. “He was my biggest fan, and our relationship was always really close. He was so proud and celebrated. There would be days he would just drive up to come watch practice, and you’d see him in the stands, loving it. We were really really tight,” Weaver says.

Weaver and his dad had an especially close relationship as long as Weaver can remember. Theirs, combined a coach-player relationship, mentor-mentee relationship, fan-athlete, and, most importantly, father-son. “He was always kind of my rock. I could go to him and we could talk about anything,” Weaver says.

This dynamic would prove to be incredibly important as Weaver encountered major hurdles in the form of Purdue Baseball. Coming from Columbus Indiana where he was a “big fish in a little pond” Weaver was immediately cut down to size as a “tiny fish in a gigantic pond.”

Whether it was the lack of playing time, the surplus of talented jocks on the team, or his awful relationship with the coach, Weaver’s experience was soured from the very start. His love for the game was gone, and despite a 30-man roster and a school of 40,000 students, he felt isolated.

“I can remember just feeling no love for the game of baseball for the majority of my experience. I didn’t feel wanted, I didn’t have a close group of guys on the team. Really I wanted to quit, and my only form of support was calling my dad, monthly, weekly, whenever and talking it out. He always just came from a place of understanding, and would say, ‘let’s give it one more month’, and so for large stretches of my collegiate career that’s what I did,” Weaver says. “It always felt chaotic, like I was just able to stay afloat among crashing waves. I don’t remember ever feeling at peace. My dad and his guidance helped me survive.”

Entering the spring of his freshman season in 1988, things would go from bad to worse for Weaver. One March afternoon at a practice, Weaver recalls the team’s secretary coming on to the field to speak with the head coach. “That was really odd, because you never saw her, I mean literally I had seen her once before my entire time on the team,” says Weaver.

As she and the head coach wrapped up their conversation, he beckoned for Weaver to come over. “He told me that my dad had been put in an ambulance and sent to Methodist hospital and that my brother and his wife were coming to pick me up and take me to see him.”

Weaver’s father had been struggling with pneumonia since Thanksgiving and took a turn for the worse. “In my head, when I was home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, he was just dad, strong as an ox, he will get better, I will call home one day and mom will say he’s fine.”

Upon arriving at the hospital to his mom and two other brothers, he learned that his dad was in a coma and the pneumonia had caused his whole body to be infected.

What he didn’t know at the time, was that this would be the last moment they were all in a room together.

“We had sort of gotten squared away, and the doc said go home, get some rest, come up tomorrow, we can take care of him for the night. Well, I think we were at home for five minutes before my mom called and told us to drive back up. Before we even got there, we got the call that he had passed. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my dad. I was stuck in time and I was numb.”

With one phone call, Weaver’s entire life changed. Forever.

The calls stopped coming. The guidance stopped coming. Any semblance of stability stopped. At 18 years old. “I didn’t have a go-to anymore,” Weaver recalls.

Whether it was coping or lack of purpose and guidance, or a mix, Weaver’s existence over the next several months can best be described, in his own words, as “lost.” “I was trying to figure out what to do. I needed to make school a priority. I needed to survive baseball so I could pay for school. Mentally I was checked out. I was just on my island by myself.”

During that same time, Weaver picked up bad habits, acted out, and ultimately let his life slip away from him. “I went to shit. I would numb my pain, I would indulge in inappropriate behaviors. I didn’t know who I was and even though I traveled between frat and jock scenes, I had nowhere where I felt I belonged.”

Examples of these tendencies include his grades dropping, late nights out partying before games, and letting his body go. Ironically, through this time of Weaver’s baseball career, he rekindled a level of love for the game again. After working himself into contention for a starting spot, you might think that here is the silver lining of this chapter of his life. Finally, something positive. You’d be wrong. The night before his first start of the Big Ten season, Weaver got into a fight at a party and broke his hand. “It could’ve been a career changing moment for me. But I had no objectives or priorities or purpose other than just getting through today, even if it meant today we drink and get in fights,” Weaver says.

The next day, Weaver received the most salient tongue lashing from his coach, who Weaver admits, made no effort to establish mutual respect between the two:

“I remember him walking away and saying, ‘Your dad would be so fucking disappointed in you.’ And he walked away. So there is another one of those moments where, I am a very young man, and not only am I dealing with this loss, but now I had to start to reconcile with was I disappointing my dad, was I making him proud? Nobody had ever told me that before, and here is this guy I had zero respect for saying it. In a way I think maybe it was an endearing quality of his, acknowledging the relationship I had with my dad, and without ever bringing anything up the whole time before this, saying, ‘look you need to sort your shit out. You are fucking your life up. If you want to blame it on loss, fine, but If you want to use your dad as an example, he wouldn’t want to see you like this and wouldn’t be proud.’ I will never know if he was making a point of being a dick, but that moment will always stick with me.”

Slowly but surely Weaver began to navigate his journey of loss and self-discovery. By Junior year things had settled slightly and there was a bit more rhythm to Weaver’s existence. He found an interest in his studies and was treading water, for now. That would all change in a matter of a few random moments.

Back at home, in August of his Junior year, Weaver was sitting at a friend's house having a beer to celebrate his belated 21st birthday. He was only a few houses over from his older brother and his wife’s place. He was enjoying his beer and relaxing with his friend, when his sister-in-law burst through the door weeping and screaming “They’re telling me Mitch has been killed in an accident.” Weaver’s older brother, Mitch, was a truck driver. “I went outside with her, and her mom was there, and she tells me that, just now, my brother, Mitch has been killed in a trucking accident. It was so random to hear. From that moment, I don’t remember anything about that day, until I am on the phone later telling my mom. I have no memory of what happened the rest of that day,” Weaver says.

Here is Weaver, 21 years old, no dad, no older brother, breaking the news to his mother who lives one state over in Ohio. “I can still hear that phone call today. You can only imagine, I won’t even try to describe it.” For Weaver, the impossible happened; life didn’t get better, it got worse. The loss kept coming. The isolation, compounded by the fact that he no longer had a home or bed in Columbus to call his own, creeped into the fabric of his existence. He was stranded, with half a family and no purpose.

The personal spiral continued. Weaver was forty pounds overweight, and carried even more emotionally. “If I told you I was a division one athlete, you would have looked at me and said no effing way. We had timed miles every Sunday for baseball, and if you ran it in less that 5:30 you never ran again for the whole season. I never even finished the mile. My entire career.” If you looked at the Ben Weaver, elite endurance athlete, of today and heard at some point in his life he couldn’t even run the mile, you’d never believe it.

Through his work with the baseball Strength coach, Weaver developed an interest in the study of exercise science. Simultaneously, Weaver finally, late in college, had his “A-ha” moment. “I learned that for several generations the men in my family died around 50 years old. My dad, my uncle and their dad all died young, and if I don’t change something, I’m the next Weaver to hit 50 and that’s my finish line. It seems written in the cards.”

So, as a senior in college, Weaver made a commitment to himself that he would do everything in his power to live past 50. And in that moment, everything changed. He went for his first 30-minute run that day. Dressed head to toe in a cotton sweatsuit and Asics Runners, the only thing that was important was his personal fitness. “I was and still am so focused and so dedicated because in that running and that decision, I finally found some purpose and some belonging. I never want to be there again, those three years, that out of shape, the next 50-year old Weaver. I think the real crux of what I did then, what I do now, and what I have done in between, is that I am literally running from that situation, running for my life. I am fearful that if I am not heading away from it, I am heading towards it, and that’s a big part of who I am and what I do today.”

From that moment in college, to these moments with EPIC, Weaver’s journey wound in and out of different endurance sports and combinations. Mostly he found his passion in cycling, where he could race with elite amateur teams and earn thousands of dollars a year. Simultaneously he worked in different jobs like Physical Therapy and managing health clubs.

Weaver tried his best to balance his work and commit to his real passions of racing and personal training and coaching. The only problem is he also loved being a dad and a husband, and few jobs afford the flexibility to focus on all these components. So one day, after getting the call that his six year old daughter, Sarah, had made her first travel soccer team, Weaver had the final push he needed to venture into his own business. “I found out Sarah made the team and she had practices and games and I remember my dad saying that you cannot miss those moments, because once they are gone you don’t get them back. And I think back to him being in the stands for everything, and that’s all it took for me to quit my job and start trying to make my own business come to life.”

After starting out with one on one sessions during the day, and third shifts at UPS, Weaver was finally able to create a schedule that allowed him to focus on life, business, and passions. Slowly but surely his client base grew (which if you know him now or have the privilege of taking his classes, seems like an inevitable “duh, of course it grew”) and classes that started out as one on ones now comfortably accommodate 8 clients at a time.

These clients will note that, despite his credentials and accomplishments, the only item in the gym reflecting Weaver’s ego is the “Kona Board.” There are no pictures, no newspaper articles, no medals that would indicate in any way the elite competitor coaching class today. That’s done deliberately. “I don’t want people to come to EPIC and for it to be about me. These people are here to achieve their own successes, and I am here to facilitate that, not steal the show from what they are accomplishing,” Weaver says.

And for his clients these successes come in all shapes and sizes. Some podium for the first time in races, others shed loads of weight and feel comfortable in their own skin for the first time in memory. But for Weaver the biggest reward is knowing that what he has done for himself, he also gets to do for these people. “The fact that I can say I am Ben Weaver, 52 years old, and I add years to people’s lives, is the most gratifying and fulfilling purpose anyone could ask for. How can it get better than that?”

While Weaver now exists in a seemingly tailor made existence where his business, life, and racing schedules are molded perfectly together, he still feels loss to this day. Three years ago, after expending time, effort and emotional investment, Weaver decided to cut ties with his remaining middle brother who battles addiction. “It got to a point where I had tried to help, I offered skill sets, ultimately it was his decision whether I was a part of his life and he chose differently, and I live with that.”

For Weaver, you can see some of the ways in which he deals with his losses and journey. Whether it’s through small tidbits here and there, or a mother’s day post to a “Warrior Mama” who, like him, experienced inexplicable loss, the story of how his past meets his present is a winding one, and convoluted with twists and turns. But, in both life and racing, the rebranded logo for EPIC serves as a nice reminder. On the main wall just left of the Kona Board is a large Kangaroo with the words “Always Moving Forward,” signed by most of his clients. The thing about Kangaroos, they are physically incapable of moving backwards.

“That past, my past, was really negative, but it also set the groundwork for everything that came after it. Every positive that I have or someone gets from my class, manifested in a way from those moments and decisions in my past.” Weaver says. “Always moving forward. It doesn’t mean always going in a straight line.”

So maybe it’s weird or out of place (for any number of reasons) to say, but I, no, We, EPIC, friends, family, and fans of Benjamin Weaver, are proud. And I don’t think we’d be the only ones.