My Backstory

So, since Danny's posted about his, I guess it's time to say a little bit about my backstory.  It's not all that interesting, but it may be illustrative of the types of events that might lead a relatively dormant, slightly overweight, rapidly approaching middle-age, American male to start to try to reverse some of those trends.

The starting point for me was actually pretty mundane.  I was driving my car in early 2010 and I realized that I was sweating a little bit.  Now, it's never really a good thing to sweat while sitting still, but I also realized that I had a bit of a gut - actually, hell, I'll be honest - it was more than a bit of a gut.  I was nearly 240 lbs and on the slippery slope to being an overweight, middle-aged statistic.  Just another of the faceless guys who populate corporate offices, eat at chain restaurants for lunch and puff their way through mowing the lawn every other weekend.  The kind of comfortable, sedate existence that leads to an early grave.  I was never the best athlete, but I wasn't inactive either.  I played High-School football, basketball and track & field, and I liked to think of myself as capable of so much more than I was demonstrating.  What I needed was something to kick me in the ass.  Something to get me into the gym and away from the pizzas.

Luckily, the answer to my predicament presented itself in the summer of 2010.  I was asked to go to Sri Lanka for three weeks for some consulting.  During my time in the heat near the equator, I ate mostly fish and rice, and came home having lost nearly 15 lbs without even trying.  I've usually had trouble staying motivated to work out because it takes a while to see results, but I could see the results immediately. But, additionally, I also brought back something else...a case of jetlag that allowed me to be up early to go to the gym.  I got into the habit of getting to the gym at 6:30 am and doing 30 minutes of weights and 30 minutes on the elliptical.  This gave me the head start and the opportunity to keep seeing results.  I started to see the weight really come off, and I got down to 180 lbs at my lowest, eventually settling into a maintainable weight of around 185.

At that point, I think I probably could have continued the workout schedule that I had set for myself, but, if I'm honest with myself, I probably would have gotten bored and started to slack off.  This is where the second serendipitous event happened - I read an article in ESPN the Magazine about the Tough Mudder.  I was instantly intrigued, and knew that I wanted to try one.  After all, in my head, I'm still a 16-year old boy, and what 16-year old boy doesn't want to run around in the mud?  The collaborative nature of the event appealed to me (I'm not looking for a competition to push me, but camaraderie does). I just needed to find someone else, or a group of someones else, that would do it with me.  I was lucky enough to talk a friend (Danny) into the madness, and he talked another friend (Brian) into joining the craziness.  I don't think any of us really knew what to expect, but Wintergreen in October of 2011 gave us all a challenge that we loved and became addicted to.  This lead us to Pocono in May of 2012 and then onto South Carolina in October of 2012.  Over time, others have joined us - none of them, though, seem to be as addicted as the three of us are.  We've pushed each other and try to set new challenges for ourselves for each new Mudder we run.  In Wintergreen, the challenge was finishing (that challenge was larger for some than it was for others, although I won't say who - his name rhymes with CRY'N, though). The challenge for Pocono was to finish without being crushed by the event.  And the challenge in South Carolina was to run two laps.  Our next challenge is to run a Saturday Mudder and then follow it up by running the Sunday Mudder.  With each new challenge that we achieve, I realize that there's so much more that we can accomplish.  The challenge now is to aim high, and work our asses off to get to the World's Toughest Mudder next winter.

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I can say, I don't see any regular lunchtime meals at the TGIF right next to my office park in my future. I won't necessarily turn down a pizza, but it will be paired with a 63-day course of Insanity.  Thinking back, I realize that the 240 lb guy in the car in 2010 couldn't have imagined completing anything like a Tough Mudder or actually working his way through the Insanity workout regiment, but the guy who's typing this blog post isn't willing to accept sweating while sitting still anymore either.