In the beginning, I was fat. The combination of a working mother, an overindulgent grandmother, and bad luck in the genetic lottery set me on the path. I don't hold anything against them. Being a parent so many years later, I don't know how they didn't beat my bratty younger self to death. I'd say I was just a little on the stocky side until about the fourth grade. That's when everything started to snowball. There are plenty of awful mid to late 1980's pictures of me in awesome, rad 80's apparel with a gut poking out. I was in that now seemingly incomprehensible latchkey kid demographic. Living only a block from my elementary and middle schools, I walked to and from school but was typically soon-after checked in on by my grandmother. This often meant either trips to the nearby convenience store for chips and an ICEE, snacks from my grandfather's family store, or a trip to McDonald's or Burger King. Then, my mother would get off work at 4:30 every day. When she got home, she would fix a normal dinner for the family. Of course, already being full, I got to be very picky about her food. I'd say by junior high, I was probably fixing my own dinner most of the time. Either way, I wasn't active enough to "stomach" the extra calories and the weight kept adding on. I never felt horribly obese. But I was typically the second fattest boy in my class. The only thing that kept me from being picked last for every team was the fact that I usually got picked over the kid who just seemed totally incapable of ANYTHING athletic.
My first attempt at doing anything in the name of fitness was during junior high. My mom, a yo-yo dieter, and one of my brothers, who was always more overweight that I, latched onto the running boom. My mom bought them both running shoes. I, too, insisted on a pair. But being a kid, I quickly lost interest, even though my brother underwent a dramatic transformation and lost probably 100 lbs.
Puberty brought things back into balance a little bit and the year round physical activity associated with high school football kept me in decent shape. But I stayed on the heavier side of things and stayed on the bad side of 200 pounds from my freshman year of high school on. 200 would have been great on the over six foot frames of my brothers or dad. But it was a little too much on the 5'9" body I possessed.
College saw a real end to any intense physical activity and I packed on the freshman 15 for quite a while. Finally, in grad school, I decided to make a change. I was training to be an archeologist and had capped the previous season's fieldwork with an embarrassing day on an excavation that I had to beg leave from due to the fact that I'd overexerted myself in the heat. Sometime over that following winter, something snapped. Perhaps it was because my then-girlfriend had moved off to attend pharmacy school in another city, disrupting my unhealthy college routine of going straight to her place after classes and lazing the evenings away with her and her roommates. This routine had typically involved napping, eating fast food, and sitting outside chain smoking. Either way, I'd discovered Men's Health magazine and ordered a weight loss book hawked in the pages within. While I attempted to eat a more health, balanced diet, I basically substituted whole grains for white breads and gave up fast food for more chicken and lean meats made at home. I also began a little running program.
Now, I knew nothing of formal distance training. My mom and brother both topped out at doing about 2-3 miles daily. My other older brother, then a Green Beret, told me stories of running sub 7 minute miles that gave me a little bit of a target speed-wise. I began by walking 2 miles. Eventually, I started running the second mile. For about 5 months, I did this daily, dropping a second here and there until I got to a good 7 minute pace. Every now and then I would mix in a 3 mile run and even made it to 6 miles a couple of times. Then summer rolled around and my physically demanding archeological fieldwork saw me cut my running out once I reached about 170 pounds, down from around 230 when I started. My girlfriend joined in and also began running a little, losing a bit of weight herself just in time for our wedding the next summer. From then until we began having kids, we ate relatively healthy and ran sporadically.
Things veered of course during my wife's first pregnancy. Her father passed way unexpectedly, truly traumatizing the whole family. Then, after our first kid came along, any notion of health and fitness was swamped by exhaustion. We told ourselves we didn't have time to fix nice healthy meals. The fact that my wife was in med school then residency didn't help, nor did two additional children.
But finally, about 6 years ago, my wife Jennifer decided she needed to get in better shape. She had started in private practice just after having our third child and wanted to work off the pregnancy weight for good. About the same time, my paranoia about my own health (Web MD convinced me I was dying of something new every week from 2004-2009), my envy of my wife's progress, and the beginning of a new job collided to rouse me out of a then-six year lapse of any fitness related activity. My new job saw me located along the shore of a rural East Texas lake and at least 15 minutes from the nearest McDonald's. Not wanting to waste my time and gas driving so long and risking going over my allotted lunch, I brought quick microwave meals from home. I'd mentioned to a co-worker that I should exercise during lunch instead. She mentioned the office once had a fitness push and the result was a room full of exercise equipment that now went unused. She told me I should ask the cleaning staff if they could clean up the room for my use. They did. A co-worker and I began using the room immediately.
I sought out what had worked for me before-running. Though by this time, I was at an all-time high weight of about 252 pounds. This meant I had to start VERY slowly. It took at least two months before I made it two miles. But even then, even though I was eating healthier and running every day at lunch, the weigh wasn't coming off. I decided to do something drastic, something I'd never even heard of anyone doing before. I decided to run early in the morning before work, in addition to my lunchtime run. This seemed to work. After discovering the wonderful double-edged sword of online registration, I entered my first 5k two months out. The constant two-a-day runs and fear of embarrassment began to work their magic. By race day, I was down about 15-20 pounds.
I picked what my now-quite experienced eye would call a miserably tough course for a beginner and during August of all times. I had to make one hell of a finishing kick to avoid being the last male running finisher, just nipping the 70 plus year old man in long, black tube socks. But a spark had been lit. For the next few months, I entered every local 5k I could, knocking about ten minutes off my time by Christmas. The weight continued to melt off. Along the way, I entered my first half marathon, despite my wife's protests that I would die. I lived and debuted at a respectable beginner time, just under 2 hours.
About the same time, that miracle of the internet ALSO alerted me to the presence of a marathon training group that met every Saturday for long runs at the park down the street. So THIS is who all those runners were I was seeing every Saturday morning while I built up long runs for my half marathon! I got on their website, looked at their schedule, and discovered that they had used the same half as a midway through training tune-up race. I wondered...could I keep track of their long run schedule and also target their goal marathon that coming February? Well, nothing I could do but try! Over the next two months, I kept building my long runs, culminating in two 20 milers. Certain that I was prepared as the training group was, I set out with my terrified wife for the inaugural (since joining the Rock n' Roll series) Mardi Gras Marathon.
The marathon was a wonderful experience. People knock the Rock n' Roll series for being too corporate, too big and too cookie cutter. But for a beginner, this can be a good thing. The expo/packet pickup was easy and the souvenirs were plentiful I probably bought $300 worth of clothes and shoes and other items. The race was similarly well-organized. I made the typical beginner mistake of going out too fast. Once I hit the proverbial wall at around mile 20, I refused to walk, though, and gritted it out for a 3:59 finish. I'd attained the sought after sub-4 hour finish that many first time recreational marathoners shoot for. However, I felt awful at the finish line. I'm sure I can dig up the footage of me telling my wife on video that I would never again run a marathon.
To avoid making a long story longer, I'll just say that was seven marathons, four 50ks, four 50 milers, and three 100 milers ago (not to mention 68 and 60 mile DNFs at two separate 100s). I even placed as high as 6th place in one of the 100's! In these past six years, I've made more friends through running than I did through all other means combined in the previous 9 years I'd lived in my current city. But, unfortunately, over the past two years, over-racing led to injury. That, combined with the inevitable bit of boredom has seen my running mileage gradually taper off and my weight creep back on. And it's an odd state I find myself in. I can still go out with my marathon group for 20 on the weekend yet I'm only about 25 pounds lighter than I was when I started my running craze 6 years ago this spring. Along the way, in the last two years, I've grasped at every dietary and fitness straw I could. Low Carb, vegetarian, HIIT, you name it...I've tried but not been able to use any to stave off the pounds.
But with a new year, several goal races, and a desire not to lose my identity as a runner, I make this push. This first work week of the new year, I've so far managed to run every day, something that has been more and more elusive over the past year. With a refocus on my nutrition, thanks to my wife's new-found discovery of eating less processed and organic food, we'll see where it goes!
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