Our Wedding - The Wedding Deck on top of Aspen Mountain
28th April
2008
written by bob

As I mentioned earlier for this bet, I tipped the scale at 224.2 lbs and my challenger weighed in at 290 lbs. Without giving away my friend’s identity, let’s call him Sam (since he has no idea I’m blogging about our challenge and I have not asked for his consent to use his real name). This is not the most I have ever weighed in my life. I once tipped the scale at 232 lbs. First, that is too much weight for me. I’m only 5’10″ with I have an athletic build but that is still too much weight for my frame. When I weighed 232 lbs, I had more back aches than I can ever remember! Second…weighing this much was the clincher for me to take control of my personal fitness level and make a change. I had too much weight on my front gut than I ever had and my back constantly ached.

Now, I have always had a membership to a local gym wherever I lived. Reason being, I never wanted to fall out of shape. Maybe I haven’t been doing things right all these years and I would never claim to be an expert in fitness but sweating my butt off in the gym only did so much for me. I was able to keep in pretty good shape however now that I’m in my mid-thirties, my metabolism has dropped a couple of notches. As well, I’m sure my diet wasn’t the greatest and the fact that I love beer has “something” to do with the weight gain. However, over the past 4 years I have discovered the only way that weight will just “melt” off me…running. That’s it, plain and simple. RUNNING. I kid you not! While I don’t love running (never did), it works and is hands down the best way and quickest way to lose weight.

In 2004, a close friend and I decided that we would run a half marathon together. Since we both worked for an airline at the time, flying somewhere wasn’t an issue. So we received input from another colleague that had run a couple races and his advice was to run the Santa Barbara Half Marathon. It is always held the first weekend in November and the weather is perfect! It’s a 13.1 mile course that starts at Ledbetter Beach and weaves through the ocean side neighborhoods. Approximately 8 of the 13 miles are running along side of the Pacific Ocean. Could it get any better than that? Since then, we have actually run that race twice…once in 2004 and again in 2005. The first year I completed the race in 2 hours 26 minutes. The second year I wanted to better the previous year’s time and did setting a new personal record (PR) of 2 hours 9 minutes! I was really pleased with my results.

How was I able to figure out how to training for a half marathon since I had never run farther than a mile (if I was lucky) in my life? I found a training program online from an expert runner/marathoner Hal Higdon (www.halhigdon.com) and used it to train for both these races. Thank you Hal for putting up such great information for people like me to use as a guideline! While there are lots of sites for running and the choice is yours, Hal’s site is what I used.

Another purpose to my blogs is that I want to see if myself, an average person, can get back into great shape. I don’t think I’ve seen my six-pack abs since I was probably 12! For me, the best shape (physically) of my life was when I was 22 years old and working full-time nights as a bartendar. I would start work around 5-6pm every night and work until 1-2am, go home to bed, get up around 10am head to the gym for 3 hours to lift weights (no running since I hated it) then back home to get ready for work again that night. That was my routine for 4 months…and I was in great shape after that summer! I weighed 183 lbs, was solid and in shape! Those days are long gone. Then I discovered running.

My experience with running and losing weight is no longer ever second guessed. When I hit 232 lbs following Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I had enough. It was time to hit the pavement. Starting out is always tough especially if you haven’t been running on a regular basis. So…to ease into this I would set small goals: run one mile. Once that became easy to do, I would up my mileage to 2 miles and do that until things got easier. I continued this cycle and eventually I was running 10 miles at least once a week with shorter runs on the other nights. As my running progressed, my weight dropped…and dropped some more. My routine was to basically run 5 days a week and each time I run the shorter runs, try to complete 2-4 miles but never less than 2. Some days these runs occurred in the gym at lunch and others (most others) occurred later at night a few hours after dinner around 10pm. In four months of running, I lost 40 lbs! No kidding! I weighed in at 198 lbs and I felt great! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do but I stuck with it. In the beginning I set a goal to lose 20lbs…but then the weight just kept “melting” off so I continued to run.

In my next post, I will talk about some of the basic equipment to get for running including a subscription to Runner’s World magazine. There is no way to get inspired than to read the stories of regular people like you and me. By the way since my bet with Sam has started, I have been out running just over half a dozen times and have thus far lost almost 10 lbs! I need to commit to a more regular schedule to run and my weight will really start to change (for the better)! I will let you know how everything is going then.

Bob

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