RUNNING BACK REX? Jets coach Rex Ryan, showing off his slimmed down figure yesterday (pictured), ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, earlier this month. (
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The question for the svelte Rex Ryan during his visit yesterday to The Post’s offices was whether he could imagine if the 1,500-pound bull at the end of his run in Pamplona had seen him when he weighed 348 pounds.
“I would have taken him on!” Ryan said, and laughed. “He would have avoided me instead of the other way around. That’s what really would have happened, I think.”
The 230-pound Ryan, he of the 36-inch waist, down from 50, thankfully didn’t sport the same bull’s-eye during his successful running-with-the-bulls fantasy this month in Spain.
“My son wanted to do it, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ ” he said.
Rex was aware of the dangers — trampling or even death by bull — so I wondered if Jets owner Woody Johnson was OK with his head coach’s idea.
“You know what? I never asked,” Ryan said. “This is my personal life, and I want to do something with my family, I’m going to do it.”
His older boy Payton had an easier time of it.
“He had no problems,” Rex said. “He never had to climb the fence like I did.”
Rex ran on two separate days, the first day with Payton, the second with wife Michelle.
“The last bull that goes through, they close the doors behind, OK?” Ryan said. “And so, I never knew where he was, you got spread out, and there’s so many people and you get jostled around and all that stuff … I lost where he was. And so, there was like a pileup right before you got into the arena, and that’s where the bull actually turns around, he’s like the last bull and so, I was like, ‘Oh, shoot.’ So I’m looking for my kid. Look, I’m panicking for two reasons: one, the bull may run me over, but then I’m wondering where my kid is.”
Saturday, however, was not the day to play matador.
“The same thing — pileup and all that stuff — but the bulls don’t turn around, they ran right through. Twenty-three people got hurt,” Ryan said.
Asked how terrifying it was, he laughed and said: “You’re like, ‘Whoa, I can get trucked by this bad boy,’ you know what I mean?”
Payton beat his father and the bull to the arena.
“The funnest part to watch is what happens after, when everybody’s in the arena,” Rex said. “’Cause then they bring these young bulls out, and they just blast people. It is hysterical.”
The run is approximately a half mile.
“We cheated. We went past dead man’s corner [300 meters from the end], so it wasn’t that far of a run,” he said, and laughed. “But I don’t want to take away from [Michelle’s] accomplishment.”
Rex had been well aware of the dangers.
“I’d rather have memories with my son and all that type of stuff, make memories instead of thinking about it,” Ryan said. “ I’d rather do it myself.”
Rex winning his battle over obesity thanks to lap band surgery after the 2009 AFC Championship Game gives him more than a fat chance to live a long and healthy life.
“Obviously I overate and I did all that type of stuff, but I never changed my habits. When I was a kid I ate the same way. My metabolism slowed way down,” he said.
He tried diets. And tried them again and again. One time he lost 60 pounds — then quickly gained it back, and then some.
“All the yo-yo thing that people talk about — I did 50 times. I was successful 50 times,” Ryan said. “I needed help. And I needed drastic health.”
The moment of truth came before the Jets’ 2009 AFC Championship Game in Indianapolis when Rex, now 50 years old, stepped on a scale inside the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center.
“I literally looked back, and there was nobody there,” he recalled.
The scale tilted to 348 pounds. And nobody else had stepped on the scale.
“I thought I was 300, 310,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s it.’ ”
I asked Ryan, who is targeting 225 pounds, if he was told his life was in grave danger.
“No, I knew it was,” he said. “Let me put it to you this way — how many people 350 pounds do you know that are over 50? They were out there at one point. They’re not out there anymore. They don’t live long.”
Ryan spoke of having his dream job coaching the Jets and this dream life.
“It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have your health.” he said. “And to me, I want to live.”
His cholesterol is low, his energy is high.
“I never changed anything that I do diet-wise, so I’m not the best patient the lap band’s ever had,” Ryan said. “I don’t follow the vegetables… I don’t do anything right. I just lost 120 pounds. I’ll go and I’ll split an entree with my wife. It is crazy how it’s changed my life.
“I was living to eat. Now I’m eating to live.”
Ryan visits his surgeon once a month to tweak and adjust the lap band if necessary. His twin brother Rob has had the lap band surgery as well.
“He goes on vacation, he loosens it all the time,” Rex said, and laughed.
I suggested to Sexy Rexy — “[my wife] never married me for my looks anyway” — he might not be here today without the life-saving surgery.
“Exactly,” he said. “That’s the scary truth of it, it really is. [The] last two years, it hasn’t been the easiest. I mean, you really don’t know.
“I’m passionate about a few things — obviously the Jets, my family and all that — but this thing, I’m passionate about getting the word out about this, to people like me.”
And that’s no bull.