How did I get this fat?

I was always a decent athlete. Never great by any means but I could play any sport decently. I was a quick study and never had trouble learning the skills it took to play most sports decently (okay, I was never a quick study at skiing and skating--apparently balance isn't my thing).

After high school I went to VMI for a semester and after those four months of hell I think my physical fitness level slowly deteriorated. The next four years of college probably saw me put on a little bit of weight, but I continued to participate in enough outdoor activities to stay in decent shape.

I began teaching and coaching and put on a little more weight, but again seemed to stay fit, but finally around 10 years after I got out of college I crossed into the 200 pound category. At 5'11" the gut wasn't pretty and I managed to lose down to 170 or so, but after getting married and starting a family I quit coaching and even playing golf and started comforting myself with food.

Finally, at some point I was up to 272 pounds (it bounced around but the overall trend was definitely up_ and suffering from gout and sleep apnea. I didn't have the energy to do much.

In May of 2008 I got my weight back down to 218 through diet and backpacking. I fell in love with the AT and I have decided that I will hike all of it eventually (with my family joining me for significant portions. This past summer I did quite a bit of backpacking but I was back up to nearly 270 pounds and after having been able to pull 18 miles in a day back in 2008 it was humbling to realize I could only backpack 8 miles at best and I was done for the day.

Meanwhile, my daughter had shown promise as a distance runner and decided she wanted to run cross country for our local high school this past fall (she is only in the 7th grade so she didn't count this year, but still ran as an unofficial member of the team). I was noticing that my son was following in my lazy footsteps so I convinced him that we would start running too. My ulterior motive was to have a family in shape so that we could backpack together in the summer of 2010 without pain (my wife has always been a runner so she was in good shape already).

Anyway, the first day of cross country practice for my daughter led my son and I to the track. We could only do a mile and we walked most of that. There is no way we ran more than about 3/8 of a mile that day. We were suffering, too.

Well since then I've dropped about 20 pounds and Hunter and I have completed two competitive 5K's (my best time is 40:39 and his is 44:05). We are much healthier and happier and this Thanksgiving we will run the Turkey Trot in Charlottesville, VA. It's a hilly run so our personal records may not fall, but we are looking to finish together in under 40 minutes.

My wife is shooting for under 30 minutes and my daughter is looking to win a prize in the 14 and under category and she'll have to run a blistering 22:30 or so in order to pull it off. I'll let you know how we do.

Click here to visit Charlottesville Turkey Trot page. If you check out the Turkey Trot Results from last year you'll see that our times our pretty ambitious compared to what we did last year:

Helen was 579th place with a 35:57 last year (shooting for sub 23:00 this year). Personal best 23:36 on Halloween in a race in which she was the second place woman.
Brenda was 590th place with a 36:31 (shooting for a sub 30:00 this year). Personal best is 28:10 but several years ago
Matt was 911th place with a 50:50 (shooting for a sub 40:00 this year). Personal best was a long time ago in college, but since I started running this year it is 40:39.
Hunter was 915th place with a 51:03 (shooting for a sub 40:00 this year). Personal best was on Halloween with a 44:05.

Our goals are a tad ambitious for all of us (again this is a hilly course) and I don't think any of us will be unhappy if we are slightly slower