Still at it…

One of the weirdest things about my life right now is that I am a runner. As of yesterday, I have run a little over 53 miles this month, and if my long run goes as planned tomorrow, I will have logged 60 running miles this month. A year ago I might have logged 60 miles on my bike in a month, but not a single mile had been logged running at that point. My running career began on September 3, 2012, so it’s almost been a full year. In this past year I’ve run five 5Ks and one four-mile race. My first 5K (last Thanksgiving Day, running with several members of my family!) was a hair over 40 minutes. My best 5K was 37:14 on Memorial Day this year, in a pouring rain. My four-mile time was something over 50 minutes. These are lousy times, but at age 59, I’m not worried about that.

Do I really care about the times? Hardly at all. I’ve been amused by the fact that in most of the races I’ve participated in, I have been the last-place person in my age class. I guess by the time you’re my age (59) you have typically been a runner for a lot longer than I have. No worries–I’m still a lot faster than the guy sitting on the couch. And in spite of my novice status and my less-than-noteworthy performances on race days, I LOVE the race day environment, and the atmosphere among my fellow runners, who are all so encouraging and supportive. I even love wearing the race bibs and I have saved every one, with my time written on it.

I love that in a race there are people cheering for you whom you have never met, who don’t know your name unless it happens to be printed on the bib, who are simply there to encourage you to keep on running until you finish. (And frankly, that’s my first goal for every race.) After a race, I love the feeling that by finishing, I have accomplished something that most of the people I know have never even attempted.

My lovely wife and I celebrated 30 years of wedded bliss last month, but our real celebration will be the weekend of October 19, as we have entered the Waddell  & Reed Kansas City Half Marathon together. It will be her third half, and my first. We’ve been training this summer, trying to get as much running done as our busy schedules (and weather conditions) will allow, and this month has been a big one. I have done two 6+ mile long runs; tomorrow we’re going to shoot for a 7-miler, which puts us on pace to have completed a long run of 10-12 miles a week or two before the day of the race. We’ve been shooting for around 10-15 miles per week; our weekly mileage will go up from here on out.

We have done quite a bit of our running in the evenings lately, to escape some of the heat (but none of the humidity). I have not sweat this much since I rode my bicycle to Wisconsin in the summer before my senior year of high school. It used to be that running more than 10 minutes was a difficult challenge for me. Now I routinely run 40-50 minutes, and my long runs so far have been more than 90 minutes. This implies that my half-marathon time will probably be upwards of three hours, but again, I don’t really care, as long as I finish.

Having a running partner (my lovely wife) has made a huge difference. I always run longer and better when I run with her (though I know she slows down a LOT for me), and we definitely enjoy being out there on the road together.

I have actually put over 300 miles on my very first pair of running shoes; after the half I will probably try to replace them. I suspect that for most runners, 300 miles in a year doesn’t seem like much, but to me it is HUGE, and more significant than I can say. (And my weight is now around 208–down from 296 in May of 2012.)

I am grateful for the opportunity to take on this new pastime at my age, and though I may never grace the winners’ stand, every mile, every breath, every drop of sweat, every sore joint and muscle has been worth it. For now, and for as long as I am able to do it, I am a runner.

More details on my progress

When I re-started this journey on May 3, 2012, I weighed 296 pounds. At the time, I had pretty much chronic back pain, difficulty sleeping, bad knees, and almost constant heartburn from my bad eating habits. My exercise regimen (if one could call it that) was an occasional walk of 20-30 minutes or a short bicycle ride now and then. Running was completely out of the question.

Today, April 11, 2013, I weigh 211 pounds, and I’m running about three times a week. I recently did a 2-mile run at an average pace of 11:56. I have run a sub-11-minute mile. I’ve been running for about eight months.

My back pain has decreased dramatically. I have no trouble sleeping (and I am told that my snoring has practically stopped). My jeans waist size has gone from 42 inches to 36 inches. My shirt size has gone from XXXL to XL.

When I started running, I could only run for one and a half minutes at a time. Now I can run for at least an hour.

I feel so much better, both physically and emotionally. My general outlook on life was never terribly negative, but even that has improved. I know I have a long way to go, but I’ve never been more confident that I can do better.

I never dreamed I would be able to say this: “Thank God, I am a runner.”

Still on track

Just a quick update, since it’s been a while: I’m continuing to lose weight, albeit a bit more slowly than before–I’ve backed off on the aggressiveness of my LoseIt plan, which is recommended once you get this close to your target weight (and I’m about 26 pounds away from my initial goal). This is the lightest I’ve been in maybe as much as 25 years–I’m pretty close to what I weighed when I got married in 1983. (Speaking of which…more on that later.)

Since November, I’ve run two 5K races: a Thanksgiving Day run in Lawrence (which I ran with my wife, my daughter, her boyfriend, and my son–who actually walked it), and another in late January in Lenexa (the Battle of the Bean 5K). I finished the Thanksgiving Day 5K in 40:09, and I finished the Battle of the Bean in 39:01. This Saturday my wife and I will run in the Rock the Parkway event in Kansas City–she’s doing the half-marathon and I’m doing the 5K. Then in June there will be a 4-miler (4 For Others) sponsored by my church, and possibly another 5K in July.

But the cool (and somewhat scary news) is that we will celebrate 30 years of marriage in July, and we have signed up for a half-marathon together in October in Kansas City. Boy, have I got some training to do.

Although there have been some lean weeks during the snowier winter months, I’ve tried to maintain a three-times-a-week running schedule since September, and that seems to be just about the right amount of running vs. rest for me. Now that the weather has started warming up, I may be adding some biking on the off-days, as a way to cross-train, I suppose. I haven’t exactly been tearing up the track–my average pace has been hovering around 13:30/mile (or a little better), but I have gradually been increasing my distances. My longest run so far has been 4.5 miles. After this week’s race, I will begin a training program for the half-marathon that adds a bit more to my long-run mileage each week (along with speed work and hills, etc.)

I’m excited, but apprehensive about the half-marathon. At this point, I’m simply trusting that if I am disciplined in my training, I will be able to finish it. But I think that I need to think of training as not just the runs, but also the rest, the hydration and the diet. So there is a lot of work to do, and a long way to go, but I think it will be a good journey.

I feel pretty good these days–I am wearing smaller clothing, my wind and endurance are improving, and I’m feeling like I have more energy and drive. Not bad for a nearly-59-year-old-gray-haired guy.

Back on track (so to speak)

I just got back from a workout at the track at the middle school a couple of blocks from my house. I ran 2.5 miles this morning, in anticipation of a 5K race that I will be running with my family on Thanksgiving Day, just three days from now.

If you’ve read this blog before, several questions may be entering your mind about now:  (1) Where has the author been for the last three and a half years? (2) Running? I thought this was about biking. (3) How’s the weight loss going?

In January 2009 I took a new job that ended up limiting my blogging time. But I also quit writing on this blog because I began gaining weight again, and frankly, that’s embarassing. When I began my weight-loss and fitness journey in 2008, I weighed about 305. I got down to 225 by February 2009–a loss of about 80 pounds. Then gradually I began slipping into old habits and by May of 2012 I was back up to 296. Not exactly a success story to write about.

A couple of things conspired in my life to help me turn things around again. My wife and I had a heart-to-heart talk about the fact that my choice to overeat and eat badly was tantamount to choosing an early exit from this life. This is important enough in itself, but now we have two grandchildren, and I was choosing to eat pizza and donuts rather than take care of my health so that I will be here to watch them grow up. Sounds a bit harsh, but it’s the truth.

The second thing that caught my attention was watching the difference in the aging process for two members of my family. My father turns 80 this week, and he swims three times a week, still walks a lot, works every day in his wood shop, and is active, sharp, healthy and fit. Another member of my family is a bit younger, maybe 77, and rarely walks farther than from his easy chair to the bathroom, needs assistance with bathing, watches TV pretty much all day, has to take handfuls of pills several times a day in order to stay alive, and will very likely die a slow, painful death in a hospital bed or nursing home before too long.  I’m in my late 50s, and I still have the opportunity to choose which of these paths I will walk. How stupid would I have to be to keep going the way I was going?

So I got the Lose It app for my iPhone and began tracking my food intake and living within a daily calorie budget, starting on May 3. I started making better food choices. I rode my bike a lot during the spring and summer, and then I decided that maybe I could try running. I had a brief running period when I was in my mid-20s–I ran one 5K race, then quit running for 30 years and got fat again. I have always excused myself from running, claiming that my knees were too bad, I was too heavy, it would be too hard on my body, etc. But my wife is a runner, and I’ve been to most of her races and seen men older than me and even fatter than me running. Back in January, at my wife’s first race of the year, long before I started my turn-around, I experienced just the tiniest bit of longing for a day when I could do what those runners were doing. It still didn’t seem possible, but the seed was planted.

Around mid-summer I attended another race with my wife, and by this time I had lost some weight, so the idea of me running started to seem less like a fantasy and more like a long-term goal. I’ve had issues with foot pain for years, so I started reading a bit about running as a beginner, and quickly realized that good-quality running shoes were essential, and most of the sneakers I had worn were cross-trainers, whatever was cheapest. My birthday is in July, so I decided to take a risk and see if maybe some decent shoes might make a difference.  So my wife and kids pooled their money and as a birthday gift, sent me to the local running sports store to get fitted for some decent shoes. I wasn’t sure I was ready to run right away, and I initially thought I would wait until October or November, when it was cooler (we had a brutally hot summer here), and after I had lost a bit more weight. But one Sunday evening early in September, I just decided to go for it, and I went to the track and did the first “couch-to-5K” workout, using another app (5K Runner) that coached me through the running/walking intervals. That first workout went really well, and I completed all 24 workouts in eight weeks. I’ve been running three times a week ever since (with one week off for a trip to the Dominican Republic). I’m signed up for my first 5K and will run with most of my family on Thanksgiving Day. I expect to finish it, and I will give thanks to God for allowing me another chance to get my health back, and for helping me lose weight again. Apart from his help, I’m convinced that none of this would have happened.

Today I weighed in at 227–I have lost 69 pounds since May 3. I have 42 pounds yet to lose before I have a BMI in the normal range, and I’m praying for the strength and discipline to get there (and stay there). And, as I noted earlier, today I ran 2.5 miles. When I started running, I could run little more than a minute without stopping. I couldn’t even do a full lap around the track. Today I ran about 10 laps without stopping. In a few days I’ll run 3.1 miles. Soli Deo Gloria.

I still might not have a lot of time to write here, but now that I’m about where I was when I left off before, I felt I should at least check in with an update.

Mid-winter update

Photo by Playingwithbrushes

There’s been a break in the cold here in northeast Kansas, but I haven’t had time to get out on the bike yet.  That might change this afternoon–my wife has asked me to get her bike out and air up the tires today, because we’re supposed to see an afternoon high in the upper 60’s (Fahrenheit), and we may try to get a short ride in this afternoon.  The nice weather won’t last long–it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow night, and I suspect we’ll be back to the typical Kansas cold winter within a couple of days, but my legs definitely need a work-out.

I want to thank those of you who have been so encouraging to me as I’ve reported on my weight-loss journey.  It means a lot to me.  Although the holidays were rough on my eating habits, and I did see my weight bump up a bit by the first of the year, it was only a few pounds, and I managed to recover and take off all that I gained, and then some.  This week I weighed in at 225 pounds, the lightest I’ve been in at least 20 years.

Over the holidays I had to buy some new clothes–and I was literally thrilled to buy a pair of Levi’s 501’s with a size 38 waist–I’ve been wearing 560’s (loose-fitting jeans with extra room in the legs and seat) for years, with a 42 waist, so getting back into the 501 button-ups was way cool.  I haven’t been able to wear those for many, many years, and I’d forgotten how comfortable they can be.

Photo by Terry Jacobsen

I also bought a few new shirts–I had been wearing the 3XL size for about 10 years, but I still had a couple of 2XL’s around, so a few months ago I started wearing those.  Now, even those are too big for me, so I bought a couple of XLT’s, and they fit great.  One of my daughters got married this past December, and I when I was fitted for my tuxedo, I was able to wear a shirt with a 17-1/2-inch neck size–the last time I bought a nice dress shirt, it was a 19 or 19-1/2.  I also bought a sport coat recently that was a 48-long…the last sport coat I bought was a 54.  (And just for the record, that’s my lovely wife with me in the photo at left, not my daughter!)

For someone who has had to shop at the big-and-tall stores (or in the limited big-and-tall sections of regular clothing stores) for the last 15 or 20 years, it’s kind of a big deal to be able to buy clothes anywhere I choose.

Believe me, I’m still a long way from fitting comfortably into a pair of real biking shorts–but by summer, who knows?  It’s not unthinkable any more–and it really was unthinkable when I began this journey.  (But I won’t post a picture until I’m sure it won’t gross anyone out!)

Anyway, thanks again to my friends and family and readers for your kind and encouraging comments.

Another “before & after”

My lovely wife and I went on a ride in early October, and before we left, she snapped a photo of me that was similar to a photo she took back in May.  On days when I’m feeling discouraged, these pictures really help.

The shot on the left is from May 19, 2008; the one on the right was on October 10, 2008.

A “before & after”

This has little or nothing to do with biking, for which I apologize profusely in advance, but it does have to do with my weight loss, which is partly due to my biking, so I’m going to toss this in here anyway.  I am now down to about 235 pounds (give or take the two- or three-pound margin of error on my cheap bathroom scale), and this weekend I played a gig at a local fall festival, which reminded me that I had pictures from when I played the same gig a year ago, when I weighed 300+.  So I decided to do a little “before & after” image comparison, just for grins:

Yep, definitely a smaller person

This makes me happy.

Eating to live

Photo by j_bary

My wife took the day off today, so in a few minutes we’re heading out for a longer ride—maybe 20+ miles, depending on how much time we have.  I’m looking forward to it, because it’s a beautiful day, sunny and warm, but not too warm.  There’ll be a fairly stiff breeze, but I think we’ll have a great time.

I weighed in this morning at somewhere between 236 and 237 (our scale’s margin of error is probably about 2 or 3 pounds, so who knows?).  But that’s the least I’ve weighed in perhaps as much as 20 years.  I’m still not entirely sure how I’ve managed to lose 66 pounds in the last five months—it’s definitely “a God thing”—but I believe I may also be seeing the evidence of a fairly radical change in my attitudes toward food.

The other evening I was a bit hungry by around 9:00pm, and my first thought was to go get a bowl of cereal or something.  My very next thought was, “an apple would be better for me.”  That’s when it struck me that something was changing.  You have to understand that I was a person whose idea of a great lunch for many years was two double cheeseburgers, fries, and two apple pies at MacDonald’s. I didn’t always eat that way, but I did it often enough to blow up to over 300 pounds over the years.

I loved to eat stuff that tasted good to me, and most of it involved fried stuff and bread.  I loved a fried, glazed donut (or three, or four).  I loved pizza, and I ate whole pizzas in one sitting.  I loved the occasional big breakfast of eggs, sausage or bacon (or both), pancakes slathered with butter and drenched in syrup.  Fast food was my staple.  It would not be unfair to say that at times I lived to eat, or that eating was meeting some kind of psychological or emotional need that I had.

One of our pastors, who is also dieting and losing weight, happened to casually mention in a sermon one day recently that he was learning how to eat to live, rather than living to eat.  I had heard that phrase before, but this time I understood what that meant.  When I elected to have the apple because it was better for me than the bowl of cereal, I was eating to live.  I was hungry, and my body wanted food, but I made the decision to give my body what it needed–a healthy piece of fruit—rather than what I craved (a bowl of sweetened cereal).

More and more since that little “epiphany” I have found myself making decisions about what to eat based on what would be good for my body, not what would taste good in the moment.  I’m eating because my body needs certain nourishment, not because I want to taste something good.  (If it tastes good AND is good for me, that’s all the better!)

This attitude, I think, will be the factor that helps me continue losing weight until I reach my goal (and I’m still a long way from it, but I’m 66 pounds closer than I was in May).

What a difference 65 pounds makes

I took a short (6 miles) ride with my lovely wife this afternoon—it was a beautiful day, even with a stiff wind from the south, and she wanted to get outside, so off we went.  I wanted to get back in time to get a little fishing in, so we rode north about three miles, then turned around.  At the turn-around point, I noted (on my nifty little bike computer that we had averaged nearly 12 miles an hour so far.  Granted, a good chunk of the first leg of the journey was a fairly long downhill stretch, and we had the wind at our backs, but still, given that I usually average a lot slower speed (less than 9 mph isn’t unusual for me on flat roads), I was feeling pretty good about it.

The trip back, though, was a lot tougher—into a strong headwind, at times I was only able to manage 6 or 7 mph.  (To say that I’m not very aerodynamically-shaped is a pretty comical understatement.)  But even with the long uphill stretch, we ended the trip after 6 miles with an average speed of over 9 mph.

When I first got back on a bike back in May, a six-mile trip was a big accomplishment.  Of course, I weighed over 300 pounds at the time, and I hadn’t done much physical exercise beyond a 30-minute walk for quite some time.  Now, 65 pounds lighter, I’m really able to tell the difference in the amount of weight that I’m carrying on the bike.  Riding is much easier and much more enjoyable.

Well, duh.  Who wouldn’t have an easier time riding if they could shed 65 pounds of excess weight?

Photo by crankydragon

Over the weekend I had to buy some cat litter (infernal poo machines, that’s what they are, those evil little feline devils), and I was lugging a 27-pound box of the stuff to my car when I realized that not too many months ago, I was carrying the equivalent of almost two and a half 27-pound boxes of cat litter in my body ALL THE TIME.  I can’t even imagine it now.

Life is good.

22 cans of Crisco missing…

Crisco comes in 3 lb. cans (photo by VirtualErn)

I’ve lost 65 pounds, as of today.  After I’ve lost one more pound, I will have lost an amount of weight equal to twenty-two 3 lb. cans of Crisco.  When I visualize what that stack of cans of pure vegetable shortening looks like, I’m frankly stunned that I was carrying that much extra weight around on my body.

It’s about the weight of eight gallons of water.  It’s the weight of a small child.  It’s the weight of a female Chinese gymnast.  It’s a bit over four and a half stone, for our friends in the U.K.

It has slowed me down, hurt my back, hurt my feet and knees, and made me uncomfortable for years.  It has probably shortened my life.  It has made me huff and puff to get up a single flight of stairs.  It has made me miserable, self-conscious, and has kept me from doing many things I would have loved to do.  It has made me avoid even gentle hills on my bike.

With that weight gone, bike riding has been more enjoyable—I can deal with hills that I would have avoided a few months ago, and I can ride faster and farther.  By next summer, I fully expect to be able to squeeze my butt into a pair of biking shorts without getting big laughs.

I’m not there yet; by my reckoning, I’ve got about 17 more cans of lard to lose before I am at what I would consider a pretty normal weight for someone my height. But the fact that I’ve lost 22 of those rascals so far makes me believe it just might be possible.