No worries - this post will not be as existential as the title suggests. More than anything this is an attempt at getting the formalities out of the way for anyone who reads my accounts. My intent is not only for friends and family to keep up for me but to be informational and perhaps even inspiration to men and women, boys and girls in a plight similar to my own: Fat and tired of it.
My primary intent as a runner isn't even weight loss; in fact it's only come to the forefront of my mind as a result of running. That's not to say that you couldn't use what information I will provide to help you along that path, merely that I started running because because I wanted to, and now I am losing weight both naturally because of the time I spend "on the pavement" (runner's speak for running.. I think) but because I realize it will make my times better and help prevent injury later down the road.
Statistically speaking, I'm a 22 year old male of around 375 pounds who runs about a 16 minute mile on a decent day. I grew up playing soccer and let myself slip pretty horribly starting sometime around ten and continuing through the teenage years unchecked, despite the best efforts of my parents.
I started running in late May of last year, and ran my first 5K Race on August 13, 2011 with a time of around 51 minutes. If you do the math, that's about 16:30 per mile. This, for most people is in the range of a "fast walk" but with my physical state it was as fast as I could go. There will be much more information about this in a coming post.
In the end, I intend to blog first and foremost for myself, my friends and family. Second, for anyone who happens to stumble across this either via Reddit (shoutout to reddit.com/r/running and reddit.com/r/c25k) or any other means on the internet to learn from my experiences, and hopefully to realize that they too can make the huge strides (no pun intended) that I have made in life over the past 7 months.
