Got to start somewhere

This is my completely unadvertised blog chronicling my attempt to get myself into shape by trying my hand at a marathon. There are a few facts about me that are essential to understanding how difficult of an undertaking this will be for me:

• When I began my journey, I was severely overweight (5 '9" 291 lbs)
• I'm almost impossible to motivate
• My attention span, no matter what I'm focusing on, rarely lasts longer than 3 weeks

There were a pair of events that happened back to back that caused my fairly radical lifestyle change. The first was attending my older cousin's wedding. He's only a couple years older than me, but at his wedding I realized how far off I was from getting where he was that day, and time wasn't going to slow down for me to catch up. Not saying I want a life identical to my cousins, but things like wife and kids were years away because I had such low self confidence that I wouldn't be able to get that ball rolling without some serious work. The other, similar event was meeting a friend of mine from high school for lunch. It was the first time I had seen him in years, and he had just gotten a job at a law firm after passing the bar. I, on the other hand, was still working the same retail position I have been holding since I dropped out of college. I like my job, and my life has been comfortable for the most part, but being 26 and working a retail counter was never what I had in mind for myself. I told a friend about this and how it made me feel and his words are probably what inspired me to get up and make a change, when he simply said "if there is something about your life you don't like, change it". To the point, and has been effective.

Since mid-April, I've upped the amount of physical activity I do from absolute zero to what I'd say is "moderately active". I spent the first 2 months walking a few miles each day, ocasionally getting some friends to get together for basketball or disc golf a couple times a week. In June a few of my friends and I decided to start training for a 5K using coolrunnings.com's "Couch to 5K" program. This is one of the best gradual running programs out there, and if you are thinking about getting started running, it is pretty unintimidating and eases you into each run pretty well. When we started this training program I also began (and have since eased off of a bit) a pretty strict diet that I got from runnersworld.com titled "The Runner's Diet". Its a pretty nice resource of high energy foods that are low in calories if you are trying to cut back. Even if you aren't dieting, and are just looking for some ways to boost energy, its got a great list of foods and teaches you the benefits of each type of calorie.


So now here I am, about 4 months after having started trying to better myself. As far as weight goes, I've gone from 291 to 227 as of this morning, still about 50 pounds away from where I was at the end of high school, but progress is progress. I'm getting ready to start week 7 of the Couch to 5K program, but unfortunately I don't have a 5K planned for any time too close after I finish the training, so I'm going to have to wait until November 7th for the one Bass Pro is hosting. Odds are I'll probably find one in October to try first, but I'll wait for a good opportunity to present itself.

I've typed up quite a bit of information about myself and my journey to get into shape, but nothing about a marathon yet. Well, almost a year to the day that I started my walking regiment there is going to be a marathon in my home town of Kansas City. I sort of took it as someone telling me I needed to give this a try. I've really enjoyed all the reading I've done on running and training plans, and I think trying to come up with (or follow a good pre-existing) training plan will be a lot of fun. By the time I'm done with my Couch to 5K plan, I'll have about 7 months until this April marathon. I'm confident that will be enough time for me to get the marathon done in my goal time (under 6 hours currently). I know its not the most ambitious goal, but "running" a 13:40 pace for 26.2 miles sounds impossible to me right now, and I don't want to overwhelm myself.

So that is a bunch of poorly written information about me and my quest for a marathon. My plan is to make a post each week summing up my training for the week and occasionally some thoughts on running, runners, shoes, gadgets, whatever. Thanks for reading, I know it was painful, and I refuse to edit it.