Mike's Marathon Blog

I started running in September 2004. When I say this is when I started running, this is literally the first time I went for a run in my entire life. I was always a chubby kid growing up. I remember the first day that I finally switched from ‘husky’ jeans to regular ones. Yes, this was a giant milestone in my childhood. And I wasn’t even a child. I was probably 13 or 14 when that happened. I was very athletic and played almost every sport imaginable, but I never exercised. I never watched what I ate, never went for a jog, never trained for a sport, never lifted weights and sure as hell never thought I would ever run the Boston Marathon.

My goal in September 2004 was to drop some pounds. I had just graduated college and this was the time. No more studying, no more dining halls, no more drinking 4 nights a week. There were no more excuses. Besides my job, I had all the free time in the world and nothing to hold me back. I don’t remember my exact weight, but I was around 230 at the time. So, I started running.

I remember how brutal it was at first. I couldn’t even run a mile. I would walk and run, walk and run. I was also on a very strict, no sugar diet. I ate almost no sugar for 60 days. No fruit, no ketchup, no milk, no juice, no corn, no syrup, etc. I wouldn’t eat anything with over 3g of sugar. To put that in perspective, a can of coke has 39g of sugar. I don’t think I had 39g of sugar in an entire week. Even today I still look at the sugar content on food and believe it or not, because of that diet, I continue to eat no-sugar syrup, jelly and natural peanut butter, amongst many others.

I lost 25 pounds in those 60 days. I also ran my first 5k road race. I was hooked. I started to enjoy running. Not because it came easy to me. Actually, just the opposite. I liked running because it was very difficult for me. I enjoyed the struggle of increasing mileage week to week. I enjoyed recording my runs and looking back at the numbers weeks later. I loved the challenge and more importantly, I loved the results.

Based on absolutely nothing, I told my self that I would need to be 168 pounds if I wanted to run a full marathon. I don’t know where I got this number from. I didn’t read it anywhere, no one told me I needed to be this weight. I suppose I just thought 168 would be a good marathon weight. This wasn’t exactly a realistic number at the time. It’s not like I said that I needed to lose 5 more pounds. I needed to lose over 35 pounds! And this was after losing 25 pounds. It was kind of a joke, but I’ll never forget thinking that number.

I struggled with my weight for the next few years, but for the most part was always able to keep off what I lost. After countless diets, training plans and injuries, I finally finished my first half marathon in October 2008. Over the past 2 years, I ran another half marathon and competed in 2 Sprint triathlons. Onto the next challenge – the Boston Marathon.

Now please don’t think that I’m a scale Nazi. I weigh myself every few weeks. You weigh what you weigh. As long as you feel good and are comfortable with how you look, then that’s all that matters. On Halloween 2009, when I started this crazy journey, I weighed 191 pounds. Trust me, I didn’t weigh myself too much over the past few weeks. I needed to eat and I didn’t really care what I weighed. I knew with the amount of training I was doing, I would be losing weight and gaining muscle. Some times that combination does not move the scale. A few months into training, I had already lost about 15 pounds. I started to think back to 2004/2005, when I picked the number 168 out of thin air. Even in February, it was an unrealistic number. So I thought……..

I weighed myself today at the gym. I kid you not, 168 pounds. It must be fate.