My first attempt at running was when I joined the cross country team in 8th grade. I’m not sure why I joined, but my younger brother was already running 7 minute miles in the 5th grade and I thought it would be a good idea if I started to run as well. I remember a handful of meets where I think we ran a total of 2 miles. I was consistently the 2nd to last person to finish, trailed only by one of my friends, and at the end of the season I hung up my running shoes. In high school I was not involved at all with cross country or track focusing instead on marching band in the fall and tennis in the spring to keep active. My brother however, went on to become a very successful high school runner. I think his PR in the 5K was 15:30 and he ran the 2 mile in track in 9:28 and the mile in 4:24. Yes these are very fast times, and I knew there was something in my genes although it would be another 15 years before the running bug bit me.
I struggled with my weight during college, not only putting on the freshman 20 pounds, but another 40 pounds on top of that. A steady diet of pizza, potato chips and beer with my only exercise consisting of walking to class resulted in a very poor physique and difficulty in climbing stairs without running short of breath. By the time I graduated in 1994, my 6 foot 3 inch frame was carring 235 pounds of weight. There were a few times I would go for a run to try to get in shape, but the extra weight I carried resulted in tremendous pain and swelling in my knees and so those bouts of motivation would only last a week or two at a time. It wasn’t until my post college career that I began to make healthier eating choices and found low impact cardio exercise options that brought my weight down where I could conisder running again as an option.
Rollerblading and limiting my daily caloric intake to 1500 calories per day is what led to my initial weight loss of 60 pounds in the mid 90s. Unfortunately, I had not yet learned how to keep consistency in both my diet and exercise, and so my weight crept back up to 220 pounds in 1998. This was also the year I proposed to Lynn, now my wife of 22 years, and I became motivated to lose the weight again before we were married in June of 1999. I joined a 12 week weight watchers program at work and bought a stationary exercise bike for cardio work. Through weight watchers, I learned how to eat healthy and limit portions by using their system of points. This appealed to me, since as a very math oriented and results driven person, I enjoyed being able to track my calories in and calories out through exercise and actually see the results. Who knew that a 500 calorie deficit per day could lead to 1 pound of weight loss per week? It was like magic to me! While I no longer use weight watchers, they put me on the right path and if I ever start to stray and see some weight gain, I know it’s time to start another round of MyFitnessPal to track not only my calorie intake, but also my calorie ouput through a connection to the Garmin app. But I’ll get into more detail on that in a future post. So in the early 2000s I was back down to 175 pounds, tired of indoor cycling, not ready to spend seven grand on a road bike and ready to give another shot to running.
I remember my first time as an adult running down the street. I ran 2 miles and I pushed very hard. I remember the odd sensation of my brain seeming to rattle around in my skull with every step I landed. My ankles seemed like they were brittle and feeling the impact of the asphalt. My lungs burned as I past the 1 mile mark and started the 2nd mile. If I had used a heart rate monitor at the time, I’m sure I would have been above 95% of my max heart rate. I finished the 2 miles in about 16 minutes and thought I had never run so hard. My calfs were extremely tight right after I finished and would remain so for days, but I had such a sense of accomplishment that I knew this was just the beginning and I never looked back. Well, almost never. There would be some ups and downs, but through these blog posts I’ll share my running journey in detail and hope that you will find some nuggets of wisdom along the way.