Intro

Hello.

My name is Allen, and in case you didn't guess...I am overweight and am a marathoner. I haven't actually run a marathon yet, but am planning to. I have seen parts of marathons, both the race kind and the kind on t.v. where they show a bunch of episodes of the same show. I figure that should qualify me, or perhaps I should change the name of the blog to "Moderately Obese Marathoner (in training)".

I want to start by apologizing in advance for a few things. Maybe a few disclaimers should be made as well.

I have no idea what I am going to talk about. Just came up with the idea to start blogging while I was out running the other day. The idea was driven home by a discussion on keeping a journal I heard yesterday. So here I am with no preconceived notion of what I hope to make of my small piece of cyber real-estate.

"My hypocrisy knows no bounds." That is how a local sports radio talk show host introduced himself his first day on the air. I found it humorous, and think it best to just put it out there and get it out of the way.

I am a man. That is both a disclaimer and an apology. I am not very in touch with my emotions, and don't have as much empathy for others as I should.

I have four children, which means I am an optimist, a dreamer, and a cynic, as well as many other things.

As stated, I am training for a marathon. Specifically the Newport, OR marathon on June 4, 2011. I ran cross country in high school, but that was about 20 years and 100 pounds ago. I have played basketball recreationally through the years, but have not ever really done much else to try to stay in shape. So I hear some of you asking, "Why the sudden interest in running a marathon?"

I'm glad you asked. My marathon story starts with a man whom I shall refer to as D. Many people who read this will know who he is, but to afford him some privacy I shall simply call him D. He is an Iron-Man. He has done several of them in fact, as well as multiple other events. D. roped me into being the driver of his van for Hood-to-Coast 2010, an event that I had heard of but was none too familiar with. For those who don't know, it is a relay race from Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood to Seaside on the coast 197 miles away. I was also a "backup" runner in case anyone got hurt (thankfully no-one did). There are 12 members on the team, each of which runs three legs. When he explained all of this to me, I couldn't help but think that only a handful of morons would be stupid enough to sign up for such an event, and they all must be tremendous athletes like D. I was wrong on so many levels.
Turns out, there were more than a handful, there were 12,000. They weren't all tremendous athletes, though admittedly quite a few were, but there were also a lot of non-tremendous athletes. It was a grueling event for me as the driver, I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for the people who, on average, run three 10K races in a matter of about 24 hours. As I witnessed for myself the joy and camaraderie of everyone involved my whole attitude changed forever, and I was inspired and decided that I needed to run.
In hindsight I probably shouldn't have made any major decisions while suffering from severe sleep deprivation.

D. convinced me that I could run a marathon. Did I mention that he also trains runners? So he was probably just on autopilot when he was talking to me. Regardless, I believed him. I signed up for a 10K race at the end of October, and began training in earnest.

Now is probably a good time to speak to any of my fellow moderately obese brethren who may be reading this to get inspiration. Getting started sucks! You need to accept that. There will be sweat, and chaffing, and aches, and pains. I will probably devote an entire post to the trauma inflicted on nipples. Sorry if I am dashing any of your hopes, but you need to know.

So I started training. I couldn't even go 0.25 miles at a slow pace before my lungs were killing me. Talk about discouragement. Over the course of the next months I kept at it and 0.25 grew little by little until I could go 6 miles. I listened to my body and didn't push myself as hard as I probably could have, but I avoided injury, and that was my #1 goal.

I noted that there were two areas that improved at different rates. My legs and my lungs were never on the same page after the first couple of runs (when they both attempted to revolt.) Some runs would be all about pushing my lungs, while on others my lungs felt fine, but my legs were dead.

Finally race day came. It was October in Oregon which means it was cold and wet. My family loaded up in the min-van and headed to Champoeg Park. They walked with me to the starting area before heading back to the van to wait out of the cold. I will probably devote a post to this race, so I will just briefly talk about it here. I started out way too fast and paid for it dearly at the end, but I finished. I set a PR for 10K distance. My nipples were killing me, but I had done it.

So with one race under my belt, and amazed that I had been able to do what I thought was impossible just a short time before I decided to set my sights on a marathon...