Start of Week 12

I've had a little bit of a breakthrough last week. My wife and I have decided to run the April Fools Half Marathon in Atlantic City this year, which is now 9 weeks away. I started with some training runs last week and realized that I am becoming a powerful runner. I don't know if it's any thanks to the strength training, yoga, or plyometrics from p90x, but things are very different.

In college, when I was in the best shape of my life (until now), and the lightest weight as an adult, I was only able to push out an 8 minute mile. When I was done, I was DONE. No more running. Last week I decided to test myself to beat my 1 mile time and ended up trying to beat my best 5k time. I did my first mile in 7:45. I didn't feel like I had a lot of energy left when I finished, so I slowed it down a little, and pushed on to finish the 5k. I realize that the first 5k I ran had a little bit of undulation in the terrain, but it was reasonably flat. When I ran that 5k, I did it in 28:07. I was fried by the end. I felt sick, and didn't want to move. I really pushed myself to the end. This week I finished my 5k trial in 26:28. I averaged an 8:32 mile.

I'm hoping that I can try to run a single mile trial and push as hard as possible to see if I can get my time down to 7:30. That would be pretty awesome for me. In 9th grade, I had to run a mile for the Presidential Physical Fitness test. As I came across the line after lap 3, my gym teacher called out my time... 12 minutes and some odd seconds... then told me good job. That was the signal that I was done. It took me over 12 minutes to run 3/4 of a mile. I have no idea how much I weighed at the time, but I was definitely closing in on 300lbs. I was also incredibly sedentary.

I'm proud of where I've made it... so far. I've got a lot of things I want to accomplish in my life. At some point I want to lose enough weight to see a 1 in front of my number... 199 would be ok with me. I'd also like to run a full marathon and cycle a double century (200 miles). I realize that these are lofty goals, but I don't feel like there's anything stopping me from accomplishing those goals at some point in my life.

I also am getting recognition from strangers. My wife and I went out for drinks with a coworker of hers and her husband. While out, we met another couple-friend of theirs and started talking. I told them what I am working on for my business (If you're not aware, I'm building a Wellness Coaching company called No Limits) and the conversation turned to what I've accomplished. I was talking about my weight loss and one of the guys said something about my jeans looking way too big for me. The next day, I tried on an old pair of jeans. They fit.

Those jeans I tried on have a hole in the knee, so I can't really wear them in good sense, but I was proud of that moment and so we decided to go get me a new pair of jeans that fit.

If you've never been fat and lost weight before, you might not get this, but when you're losing weight, even though you see the numbers drop, you still look fat to yourself int he mirror. Only when your pants start falling off your ass and you get lost in your shirts do you realize that you're making progress. Sometimes it's still hard to see it in the mirror... but how can you argue with photographic evidence?

Ok, so I didn't get pictures taken this morning because my wife told me I could sleep in. Who was I to argue? 

I'll get some either tonight or tomorrow morning and post them... but here is my first picture compared to last week...

Amazing.

I woke up at 236 this morning, down three pounds since last week.