David Foster and his cousin and training partner, Reggie Ayer, have qualified for the Male Pairs division at the Deadly Dozen World Championships.
Inspiring fitness champion, David Foster. Picture Supplied
Reiger Park on Gauteng’s East Rand has become well known for all the wrong reasons. Gang shootings, crime and scary tales of such ilk can sometimes overshadow the really positive and incredible achievements that many of the residents in this suburb achieve, and have achieved.
David Foster is not only an example of that, but he is an inspiration, if for nothing else other than being a man who segued his entire life, saved his marriage in the process and switched up absolutely everything that once defined him. This, because he followed his heart.
Now, at 42, that reinvention is taking him from Reiger Park to London. Foster and his cousin and training partner Reggie Ayer have qualified for the Male Pairs division of the Deadly Dozen World Championships at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre on 6 September. They will compete against athletes from across the world in a brutal hybrid fitness format that combines running with 12 disciplines designed to test strength, endurance and, perhaps most importantly, what is going on between an athlete’s ears when their body starts banging the walls for them to slow down.
How to change your life, one step at a time
Five years ago, there was no world championship dream and no grand plan to become an athlete. Instead, Foster stared down the barrel of a marriage in trouble, the pressures of running a business and carrying around experiences he had not necessarily dealt with. Fitness initially offered somewhere to bury and compartmentalise that. “I needed to find something where I could say this is my therapy, this is my safe space. And that’s why I turned to fitness,” Foster said. “When I took that transition, I was coming out of a separation. My wife and I almost divorced. So it was a lot of things happening mentally at the time.”
And, of course, men do not speak as freely about their state of being as women do. Problems are hauled as a burden rather than shared. “As men, as you know, we suck up everything in the sense that we try and deal with everything ourselves. We don’t speak.” He survived a suicide attempt when he was 18, at around the same time that he became a father while still at school. His son was born in 2001 while Foster was writing his matric preliminary examinations. He and his wife had been school sweethearts and married when they entered their 20s, beginning adult life with responsibilities from the get-go.
Foster later worked in banking and insurance before leaving to enter the taxi industry, investing part of his pension in his first vehicle. His father had been vice-chairperson of the local taxi association and, before he was killed in gun violence, father and son shared something that would ultimately change Foster’s life. “While my dad was alive, when I was going through my separation, he encouraged me every day to go to gym. We hung out every day in gym.”
Father and son, treasured moments
Training became a pause to reset. “When I leave the gym, I forget about all my problems, all my financial problems, all my situations. I came out a better person,” he said. “It’s therapy for my soul, therapy for my mind.”
He left the taxi industry, altered his diet and dedicated himself to training. Also, as he changed his life, Foster and his wife rekindled their love while selling their home as part of the process before a final divorce was imminent. “After losing everything, we managed to reconcile our family,” he said. “The day our house sold, we got back together.”
Presently, Foster and his cousin are also at the tail end of fundraising for their September sortie in London. “We have managed to raise funds for our visas, for entering the competition. Now all we need to do is get funds together to pay for the actual trip,” he said.
After the event, he will be back in the saddle, taking fitness to the residents of Reiger Park along with his wife. She already runs step, yoga and cardio classes from a local church hall “We want to turn hybrid fitness into a lifestyle and a culture, especially in our communities,” Foster said. “Why not take what we started in the family and use it to contribute positively to the community? You mustn’t be a victim of your circumstance.”
