Get Busy Living

I just did it today. I signed up for my first ever half marathon. I’m doing it to test myself and mainly to get back into shape.

I’ve been training the last 26 days for a half-marathon and I finally signed up for it. It keeps me more focused on my goal and I’ve paid the money so I do not want to waste it.

Why am I deciding to run 13.1 miles?

First of all, I was so out of shape four weeks ago. I tipped the scales at 189 pounds, which is the heaviest I’ve been. In comparison, two years ago I only weighed about 172 pounds. That was the best shape I had been in since college. I got to that weight by not paying attention to what I was eating but suppose I didn’t eat too much too often. It also helped that I was doing intense kickboxing training twice a week for 2 hours at a time. Still by far the most intense workout I’ve ever been through. Finally I was living in Taipei, Taiwan which is a walking city and a very hot and humid one. Burning lots of calories just doing normal things everyday. I have pants and shorts I bought at that time that do not fit anymore.

If you don’t pay attention, the weight comes on slowly. If you knew eating a big hamburger with fries you would automatically add 10 pounds, would you eat it? No way. However if you eat like that more often than not for a period of a year, you will gain 10 pounds if not more. Gaining weight slowly creeps up on you until one day you look at yourself in the mirror and think “What the heck happened to me?” That’s what happened to me.

I decided that after I finished my JetBlue All You Can Jet month, I would start running again. The last time I trained for a 15K in 2007 I was chubby and let myself slowly put on weight. One time I woke up feeling sick and it got me motivated to get back into shape. I trained, ate healthy (important!), finished the 15K and the weight melted off.

So going from 189 pounds to running 15 minutes before I wanted to stop cause I was darn tired, to running 13.1 is a long way away.

It’s not going to happen over night and having a training plan really helps. I’m into the 4th week right now and up to running 6 miles and feel great. Still 13.1 miles sounds daunting. My goal is to just finish the race. No walking allowed.

The date of the half marathon is December 19, 2010.