weight 1

When I sit down (I have about 4 hours a day do to driving) and think about just how I let myself go to the point where I had to make these hard decisions several things pop into my mind, the majority being excuses. The first being when I had mono when I was just out of college and heading for a new job in Chicago. Prior to that I hadn’t exactly been a striking image of physical prowess but I was actually running 10 or so miles a week and wasn’t eating to badly, mostly do to having very little cash. Because of the mono I lost all that endurance I had built up over my 3 years in college, so when it came time to get back in shape it was just hard. Running a mile went from something that was no problem to leaving me winded and exhausted.

It was very discouraging to not be able to just throw on a pair of shorts and run a miles, so discouraging in fact that I just stopped trying. I lacked the ability and drive to push through the pain. I can remember many times getting half way through a mile and just dying on the vine. The thought of how bad it hurt to run and how tired I was winning out over the drive to keep going and just giving up mid way through. I don’t like writing that down. I have always tried to work my butt off and prided myself at having the determination to finish anything and do whatever I decided I could. So add being discouraged to a crumbling self image at not being able to mentally overcome the pain (something that had never been an issue to that point) and what you got was a downward spiral. Not to say I didn’t have weight and image problems long before that, but I think I’ll get into that more in a latter post.

My job in Chicago had me sitting for around 7 hours a day, and when I was sitting I was just standing still, so I wasn’t exactly getting a workout. Basically the only exercise I got was walking to the train and back and some bag time. The punching bag is a great workout if you actually work at it for more than 5 or 6 minutes. I would hit if for a minute or two and stand around, then do it again till a half hour or so had drained away and tell myself I had a good half hour work out. I ate terribly, and I gained weight. Which is pretty much the theme for the last 3 years.

What makes getting constantly bigger is that that horrible difficult work out was just got taller and taller. The more I gained and less I ran the harder it got to run, or do pretty much any workout, and the harder it got the more depressed about it I got, and the less I wanted to do it. I think the closest I came to turning it around was the all to brief stint in Cincinnati. The apartment complex we lived in had a work out room and I spend a half hour or more on an elliptical trainer, I kept speeding up my times, and burning through miles, then I decided to get off the trainer and run a mile. Devastating. It hurt just as bad, it was just as hard, and I didn’t even make it a full mile before I just petered out. I think that had such an impact on me because whenever I can’t finish I think back to first time I ran a mile with dad, and what he said to me several times was “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, just finish.” I don’t know for sure why that stuck so firmly in my mind, but when I stopped I knew it wasn’t because I couldn’t job the rest of the mile, but because it was hard, it hurt, and I didn’t want to. Devastating.

That was pretty much the last time I made a real effort to change until recently. I am still just getting started but have not let myself give up. Kaje bought me a bike to use instead of running and I took to it. However, about 3 weeks in that wall I always run into showed up. I knew it was coming, I knew it was either a point I could launch from or something that was going to stop me dead. So when that day came, I told kaje, and she told me not to stop. So instead of stopping when I was half way through that days ride, I road the entire length and then tacked 3 miles on. It was some of the worst pain I can remember. Since then I keep running into those walls every few weeks. I haven’t blasted through them like that time everytime, but I haven’t left things half done yet. I recently started doing the p90x strength training workout 3 nights a week, and it is something I hate doing. I want to leave them half done, I want to not do the abs, or only do the first round, but what I know is that the first time I do not finish, will be the last time I finish any of my workouts.