I'm taking a non-politics break here today, guys. I'm so pumped! Since January, I've lost 75 pounds, and today I ran in my first 5K race ever. Not bad for a guy that weighed 308 pounds on January 15th.
Today I just finished my very first 5K race. My only goal was to run the entire thing without walking, and to finish anything other than dead last. I am happy to report that I succeeded on both accounts. I ran just over 11 minute miles (not bad for a 235 pound guy), and I finished in 34:02.
What an incredible experience, this entire week leading up to it, I was obsessing over how fast (or more likely, how slow) I was going to run. But when race day got here...aside from the nervousness when the race started, I found myself enjoying the whole experience. The hard part was over, the months of running and preparation were done. This was the icing on the cake, the payoff from all of those months of hard work, a celebration if you will. And I was surprised...nay, I was shocked at how many people celebrated my "victory" with me. It nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes, to think how I was 308 pounds in January and literally couldn’t run ¼ mile; and now here I was, 235 pounds in October and running a 5K....and doing it with ease, having fun the whole time.
Heck, I found myself not really caring about my time. I was focused on the crowd, the excitement, the wall of people that lined the entire race course, and I was really focused on the finish line. What a joy it was to cross the finish line, with the encouragement of the other runners (ie, the good runners).
I’ll admit I’m not much of a runner – I jog maybe 15 miles a week. I’ll never be one of those guys that runs 40 or 50 miles a week. But still; what an accomplishment. I swear; even while I’m typing this I’m almost shaking with emotion. I just felt like I had to share it with others, maybe I’d even inspire a person or two along the way.
Thanks for reading....and if you want the whole story of my weight loss, feel free to read on. If not; well then thanks for at least reading this much.
My story of "fat to fit" and how it all went down:
For years I’d been slowly but steadily gaining weight. In high school in the 1980’s, I weighed in the 180 range. In college, 190’s. After I got married in the fall of 1989, I went to the doc and was shocked when I stepped on the scale: 239 pounds. As Homer Simpon would say: Holy cow, I’m a whale.
Little did I know, in later years; I would have given anything to weigh 239 pounds again. The weight slowly crept on, maybe 5 or 6 pounds a year. By the time I was 38 years old, I weighed a whopping 305 pounds. Most people wouldn’t have guessed that I weighed that much because I was built more like a football player than a couch potato. But still, 300 pounds is 300 pounds. There is no way to put a positive spin on weighing 300 pounds, that’s for sure.
The final straw was when my mother in law was fighting with my wife and made a comment in anger that went something like "oh...you and your FAT husband can just...blah blah blah...." That did it. I never really saw myself as a big fat guy before. Bigger than normal, sure. Chunky, sure. But I had to face the facts: I was fucking fat. A big fat fucker, that was me.
That following week, I made a decision that in retrospect was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life: I joined the local wellness center (gym) next to the hospital. I figured if I passed out or had a heart attack on the treadmill; hey the ER was only a few hundred yards away. I mean; I couldn’t lose with those odds. I had no grand illusions of losing 50 pounds in 6 months or anything like that. I just figured it would be slow and steady, maybe a pound or two a month. I was looking at the gym as a 3 to 5 year plan, not as a 6 month quick fix.
After nearly 3 years....yes, 3 years of working out 5 times, sometimes 6 times a week, I had made some positive changes. I had much more muscle mass, and a lot of lung capacity, cardio was easy for me...but yet I still weighed about 300 pounds. That was a hell of a lot of work to basically stay the same weight. I was in much better shape, I was a little slimmer; but yet my weight was almost unchanged. Something had to give.
And in January 2008, it did. My wife decided to join Weight Watchers and I reluctantly tagged along. There was no way in hell that I was going to commit to doing it forever, but I made a promise that I'd follow the plan exactly, to the letter, for 3 months. 90 days. I wouldn’t cheat, no matter what. I’d give it everything I had for 3 months. After that, I wasn’t making any promises. In fact, I was fully planning on doing the Fred Flintstone plan, after he joined Food Anonymous: lose a little weight, and then afterwards start eating like a pig again.
So late April rolls around, my 90 days are up. And I had lost 35 pounds by then! I felt so much better, my pants were actually LOOSE. And people were starting to notice that I was losing weight, which of course gave me a huge boost.
I decided to keep going. My new goal – let me rephrase that – my "beyond my wildest dreams goal", was to get back to my weight that first year of marriage: 235 pounds. Actually I had two goals: 235 pounds, and to run in a 5K. I didn’t even know how much a 5K was back in April, I just knew I wanted to run in one. I mean, a fat fucker like me actually running and finishing a 5K? Who knew?
I’ve never been a runner. Even though I run 15 miles a week now, I’m still not a runner, at least not in my mind. My definition of a runner is someone that runs 40 or 50 miles a week. At 15 miles a week, I’m still in the category of "painfully slow jogger". But I digress.
I started in mid-April, doing a minute or two of jogging while I was walking on the treadmill. Walk for five minutes, jog for a minute or two, walk for another five...you get the picture. I also started walk/jogging on the local high school track, starting out with walking 3 or 4 laps and then slowly jogging one lap, and building up from there. I suppose those 3 years of cardio and ellipitcal training at the gym really paid off, because I found myself quickly increasing the amount of time that I could jog. I was still jogging really slow – I called it the "fat man slog" – but hey, it was better than nothing.
By July 15th – just three months after beginning, I was able to jog the entire 5K race route. Slowly...very slowly, but finding out that I could make it was a big confidence booster. My next goal was simply to gain a little bit of speed. I began increasing from 4mph in small increments, finally to 4.5 mph and then even to 5mph.
Today, October 18th, was the big day. Our town has always had a harvest festival for years, with a 5K race right before the parade begins. Yes, that means the entire race course (at least about 2 miles of it) is lined with wall-to-wall spectators. Talk about being nervous, the last thing I wanted to do was poop out right on main street during the last mile of the race...right where 80% of the spectators were! Damn.
But I did just fine. I paced myself the first mile, kicked it up just a little the second mile, and gave it everything I had the third mile. I mean damn, I had no idea that a fat guy could run so fast. I probably did that last mile somewhere around 5.3 or even 5 ½ mph. For a fat fucker, I actually found out that I could run.
A great experience! What a rush, crossing that finish line, and knowing that I was way....WAY ahead of the back of the pack. A year ago, if you told me I’d be running a 5K race, I would have laughed. But yet; it's true. Not only can I run now; I actually enjoy it.
If there is a lesson in any of this....it’s that if a fat fucker like me – a guy that LIVED for eating cheese and Doritos and chips and dip...a guy that LIVED for eating Burger King and Hardees....if I can do it, then let me tell you something: YOU can do it. It’s not impossible.
So...from a fat fucker that weighed 308 pounds on January 14th to a much-less fat guy that weighs 235 pounds on October 18th, and can run 3.1 miles in 34 minutes. Woo hoo!