"Stand in the place where you live, now face north. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before." -R.E.M.

Losing Weight and Running Hard

04/03/2007 11:55 AM Filed in: Running | Apple

Olathe Marathon 15k-6

I blinked my eyes...hard. I hadn’t noticed previously that anything was wrong with them, but they clearly had to be off. As I stared down at the digital scale I was standing on, it definitely looked like it read “223”.

Unfortunately, nothing was wrong with my eyes. It was March of 2006; I had been married for almost three years and had been out of college for a little over a year. The stresses and heartache of being on two highly dysfunctional church staffs had been getting to me and I was eating a lot. The good news, however, is that I wasn’t exercising at all, either. If the scale was correct (it was), I was the heaviest I had ever been. I sat on the edge of the bathtub in a state of depression, somewhat shocked at how the gradual weight gain I had experienced over the last several years had finally added up to 223 pounds.

Things had to change.

I spoke with my good friend Josh Carnes and he encouraged me to start running regularly. He had been doing this for a year or two and was in really great shape. I gave it a shot, but I had gotten so overweight that it was just miserable trying to shuttle my fat body around on legs that had forgotten how to move.

I found that worked best for me was weight training. I began to use a Bowflex three times a week and I watched what I ate. Within a few months I had shed off about 20 pounds and I was excited.

Around August of that year I found out about Apple and Nike’s new iPod Nano Sports Kit. I bought it, used it and enjoyed it. Thankfully I had lost enough weight by then that running no longer made me feel like a manatee in athletic shoes. I talked to Carnes again and we got this crazy idea: we would begin training to run a marathon!

This last weekend we ran our first event in preparation for working our way up to this: a 15k (that’s about 9.3 miles for you Americans out there). We placed in the top third of the 200 or so people that ran it and felt pretty great about the experience afterward. We both decided it’s more fun to run when people are cheering you on!

run

As of today I’ve lost about 30 pounds since that dreadful weigh-in just a little over a year ago, but I still have lots of work to do. After all, a marathon is almost three times as long as the 15k we just ran. So, even though I’m proud of both of us, it’s back to the weight room and the running trail. Here’s hoping I’ll be comfortable wearing a swimsuit in public by June!