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Conroy announced the new business venture on Facebook last
weekend and acknowledged it was an odd move for a 69-year-old
writer who in 2009 published a cookbook featuring recipes for
breakfast shrimp and grits and beefsteak Florentine.
"There is nothing on my resume that indicates I'll be successful
in this unusual endeavor," he wrote in his Facebook post. "But
I'm doing it because there are four or five books I’d like to
write before I meet with Jesus of Nazareth, as my mother
promised me ... and I can't write them unless I'm healthy."
In a related post on his blog, Conroy said he stopped drinking
and began dieting on the advice of his doctor after nearly dying
three years ago from "my own bad habits."
The novelist said he also joined the YMCA in Beaufort, South
Carolina, where he met a trainer who has whipped him into shape.
Conroy, whose works of fiction and memoir include "The Great
Santini" and "The Death of Santini," said he is now partnering
with his trainer, Mina Truong, to open the Mina & Conroy Fitness
Studio next month in Port Royal.
"For two years, I’ve tried to satisfy my great interior hunger
with a diet that would satisfy a full-grown squirrel but did
little to conquer the hippopotamus that lives within me," he
wrote.
(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Trott)
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