In my previous posts some may have noticed the 2 towel racks full of medals hanging on the wall in my yoga room. The one on the left has all my marathon medals and the one on the right has medals from half marathons and shorter distance races. I think it's long past time I do a post about my running career, how it started, and where the journey into being a healthier person has taken me. Here's my running medals from the past 7 years, but that's not the end of this story / post. I want to share how I got to this point and it's kind of an ugly ordeal but here it goes...

I Wasted my 20's and Decided enough was enough

I spent a lot of time in my teens and 20's doing a lot of really, really bad things that I won't go into in detail (self-incrimination is bad on the interwebs). Needless to say as I approached 30 I started exercising and quit putting bad substances in my body. I screwed around so much in my 20's that I ended up working crappy restaurant jobs 50 hours a week while finally finishing my college degree when I had just turned 30.

I had very few friends left who hadn't gone down the rabbit hole that is the world of alcohol and cigarettes and other bad things, no girlfriend, and no hobbies at the time because all I did was work and go to school. Age 30 was the year I turned my life around (after graduating college) through running and discovering yoga.

My Introduction to Marathons and Yoga

I ran my first marathon in March 2010. It was in Knoxville TN and it was a hilly course, it was 40 degrees and it poured rain on me from miles 20-23. I barely finished because the longest training run I'd ever done before this race was 14 miles, but I finished nontheless. Most marathon training programs include about three 20 mile runs before the actual race. After completing this first race in 4 hrs 37 minutes, instead of being beaten down and thinking OK that's enough for me I was instantly hooked. Most of us marathon runners are wired a bit differently than normal people.

I spent a month recovering and shortly after I somehow found my way into a yoga class and started doing that 4-6 days per week and running 4-6 days per week. I started doing yoga to help keep from getting injured running but I quickly found I loved it just as much as running (as my posting history shows).

Enter 2011

I ran 3 marathons in 2011 starting with Myrtle Beach in February, then Nashville in April, and finally the Marine Corps Marathon in DC in late October. I was determined to break 4 hours that year, and I did it during my third marathon ever which was Nashville (3 hrs 52 minutes). I almost blacked out as I hit mile 26 but I managed to cross the finish line that hot spring day in Nashville in April and was again thirsty for more.

I trained like crazy for another 5 months and managed to pull out a 3 hr 29 minute finish in DC that fall. I ran a 200 mile relay race called Ragnar Relay in Tennessee and completed 26 more miles worth of race with my team just 5 days after DC. 52 miles worth of racing in one week put me into another month long recovery period. But I still wanted more.

2012

This was the best year of running I've ever had. I ran 4 marathons that year (Myrtle Beach, Knoxville, Cincinnati, and DC) and at Cincinnati I finished in 3:22:41 which stands as my current record. Here's the (proof of) results from Cincinnati in 2012 and DC in 2011 and the medals I got for running them. I placed in the top 5% of all the people who ran those races.

I've wanted to qualify for the sought-after Boston Marathon ever since but not come close to hitting the required 3 hr 5 minute qualifying time required for men 34 and under. Now I'm almost 38 and I need to run a 3:10 to qualify and I'm still chasing that dream, slowly but surely.

My last marathon was Las Vegas in November 2015 and I finished it in just under 3:40 but was very disappointed as there were 40 mph head winds the last 7 miles. I was on track to break 3:30 for the 3rd time in my life and I worked my ass off training for that race. But it was a great experience and I am glad I did it. It's just very disheartening to train hard for 16 weeks and have some factor beyond my control tank my time (this is very common for marathon runners--it can be a cold, bad weather, or whatever that can ruin even the best of plans and their execution).

After 2015 it was all downhill, not in a good way

I've only run one half marathon since that Day in Vegas in 2015 and I'm gonna change that soon. This year has been a struggle with depression, very little free time, and a lack of motivation but I'm happy to say the past month or so I've started to snap out of it....can you guess how I did it? I started running more than 2 days a week again.

Here and Now

I've found the same drive and motivation, drive, and happiness I once had half a decade ago since I've been running a 5k (just the distance not a race) several days per week for the past few weeks. How did I forget how important running was to my well-being? It doesn't matter now because I'm back on track.

My plan for the near future is to run a half marathon in December and another half in March. I'm about to start a 3-4 day per week training plan like I used for Vegas but I'm not running another marathon until I finish a half in less than 90 minutes which would put me at about the pace I need to qualify for Boston (the qualifying time pace for my age group is about a 7:15 minute / mile or 4:30 per km pace for 26.2 mi / 42.2 km). Obviously I can't run quite the same pace for the marathon as I can for a half.

Conclusion

I'm working on the details of my training plan this weekend and I'm going to start doing more than just the 3 mi / 5k runs I've done the past few weeks roughly every other day. I plan to share my progress intermittently and will surely share whatever time I run in my December half marathon. I'm hoping to break my current standing record of 1:34:30 which I set in 2011 and then in March I'm GOING TO run a sub 90 minute half marathon. Once I prove I can do that, I'll run marathon Number 13 of my life and qualify for Boston. Lucky 13 lol.

I'm happy to see there's some other runners on this platform and I look forward to meeting more of you (and the non-runners too, of course).

Thank you all for reading and bearing with me as I rambled through this post :) I can't wait to see where the next year of my life takes me!