Newb in NC (The Super Long Saga of How I Got Here Today)

Well, I kind of already introduced myself on the injuries forum, but decided to have a do-over here since "Hi I'm new and I hurt myself already" is definitely an inauspicious start to a daunting task.

So I'm trying out this whole physical activity thing. Have you heard of it? It's pretty sweet. You feel better, you look better, you have more energy, it's kind of like a drug. Unfortunately it's a drug that requires a lot of, well, physical activity.

Me and physical activity have crossed paths before, like that time in elementary school when I "ran" a 13 minute mile and got lapped several times by some of my classmates in the process, or the time I almost cried from happiness at not being dead last again in a neighborhood swim team event when I was a kid. Well, having had a tumultuous relationship, me and physical activity largely parted ways during high school where I proceeded to get enormously fat.

And now it's time for "The Complete Saga of the Newbie's Weight Loss or Lack Thereof To Date"

I've pretty much always been overweight, as long as I can remember at least. I was always unhappy about this, but things didn't really come to a head until Spring semester of Senior year in high school when I admitted that, yes, I was 212 pounds, having gained a whopping average of about 10 pounds a year since I was a freshman. While 212 may be ideal for a 6'4" male who plays football, for a 5'8" female who doesn't understand what "field goal" means, it's not good.

Then, on St. Patricks Day, the Atkins diet started. I gotta say, it's ridiculously hard, but boy, does it work. I dropped between 15-20 pounds, going from a size 16 bordering on an 18 to a 14 by graduation. The summer took off a little more with a continued commitment to the diet and a crappy minimum wage retail job that kept me on my feet. As time continued, weight loss slowed way down, and plateaus hit, the willpower and discipline necessary to maintain weight loss on Atkins wore off. I leveled off around 190 heading into college, which I thought was great considering I had been at 212.

Then came the "Starving on the College Meal Plan" diet which inadvertently took off another ten or twelve pounds, which was great and all, but I would not recommend this diet. If you insist on engaging on it, then enroll in a state university that requires an expensive and mandatory full meal plan for freshman where the cafeteria food absolutely sucks beyond belief. You'll find yourself eating salad and cereal pretty much every meal ever and being hungry pretty much all the time.

By November I was down to a size 12, which was great. By Spring, stress had settled in and mindless comfort eating as well, which ended the inadvertent weight loss and threw on two pounds or so just to be spiteful.

Summer discovered a perennially renewed commitment to continued weight loss, as always. This time I started trying to make friends with running again. We got to the level of virtually meaningless acquaintances, you know, the kind where you run into them and say "Hey! What's up? How you doing? Good? Good. Well, we should totally hang sometime. Good to see you bye!" Eventually I averaged out around 177 or so. Good enough, right? Running and I lost touch when I went back to school, but I started hanging out casually with Gym during the week. Me and gym would meet up and do some stuff, but it was all just aimless and the relationship lacked structure so it just wasn't really going anywhere.

Well, a year goes by with me gaining and losing the same two or so pounds with the seasons. Then something happens: I dusted off my old hand-me-down mountain bike, put some air in the tires, and drag it back up to school.

Oh. My. Goodness. Cycling? Where have you been for the last five or so years? You're awesome! You're like running but you don't suck!

So I start biking around campus, on bike trails around the city, needlessly short distances to class, wherever. Not very fast and not incredibly intensely, but managing some decent hills. It was really just for enjoyment, and that's totally what I got from it.

So summer comes and again finds the perennial commitment to continued weight loss. It was a little different this time though. It had that serious look in its eye. It wasn't screwing around. It meant business like it did back in senior year. It had been thinking. Uh oh. Thinking is dangerous. We like not thinking. It's what we do. Or don't do. Whatever.

I was thinking about crazy people one day and reading a wikipedia article about triathlons. That's the first time I found out that there's a triathlon for people who are only kind of insane. It's called a sprint distance. Huh. Sounds interesting. Sounds... doable? Really? I mean, I could be like all of these super inspiring people on BT (see how I used the abbrev there? yeah. I'm totally learning my lingo)? I could do... a triathlon?

It sat in the back of my mind. And then after just a little while of renewed attempts at physical activity and strict attention to diet, I broke the plateau I had been sitting on for a year and found myself at 172.

Holy. Crap. 172. I might not seem big to the outside observer, but this was a huge landmark for me. The smallest I remember being, seeing as how I didn't really pay attention to my weight until late in 8th grade, was 174.5. And I was shorter then. I was now officially smaller than I had ever been in my life and only 8 pounds away from having a scientifically "Normal" BMI. (I know I know, don't pay attention to that, but hey, having been in the "Obese" category before, and knowing that 164 is not an unrealistic short term goal by any means, I'm going to, at least for now.)

With that little push, it became more of a "Hell yeah. I'm gonna do a triathlon." I'm going to actually get in shape. I'm going to finally make that push and get down to the weight I'm supposed to be at. I'm going to stop being embarrassed about my body and my physical abilities, and I'm gonna do a triathlon! How cool is that??

And now it's time for "My First Few Weeks Training For A Tri"

Assessment time:
Swimming: Unlike apparently 90% of all BT's, swimming is not the problem for me. I did swim team as a kid so I at least have the technique. I still love the water with all my heart. I will, however, have to work on furthering endurance and increasing speed, but generally swimming is not my issue.

Biking: Not an issue. LOVE biking. Have done the sprint-tri bike distance several times, slowly of course, several times even going a few miles further. I need to work on SPEED in a big way, but I'm going to enjoy every minute of this.

Running: Ugh. 

Me and running have never gotten along really well. I mostly hate it. I'm kind of genetically predisposed to be automatically better at other stuff besides running, like weightlifting. I'm one of those who is gifted with strong muscles and I don't have to do much to get definition in certain limbs. Biking is cool for me because I have big ol' strong legs that I can use to push and climb. But running is a different matter. Running involves not just muscle strength, but cardio stamina. That's something I'm definitely having to work on. I hit the same wall cardio-wall biking, but it's just less obvious because I can slow down or coast down hills and catch my breath. I hit the same cardio-wall wall swimming, it's just less obvious because at the school gym, most of the other people who swim have no idea what they're doing and get super winded after two laps of inefficient dog-paddle/breast-stroke. Or they're just girls in string bikinis who are just there to attract boys and spending more time adjusting their string bikinis than anything else (can you tell I've got some vendettas?) so when I stop in the pool to catch my breath, I'm still way ahead of the curve comparatively. Course, eventually somebody with technique who's actually in shape shows up and blows me away, but that's kind of rare at my gym. I digress. My point is, there's no coasting in running, and if you slow down to the point where I need to slow down, you're just walking. Slowly. And it's pretty super obvious.

So I start to make friends with running, slowly. I'm actually kind of forced to because I'm currently at an internship where I have no access to a bike or a pool, so there's not much else I can do. After two weeks of steady progress and getting almost to the point where I can almost run several half-mile stretches with not super-ridiculously-long breaks in between, my ignorance caught up with me and I limped home after what was actually a great run, except for the part when the arches of my feet collapsed. Thus my first introduction on this website was on another forum: "Hey I'm new and stupid and I hurt myself." A week of no running later and some new insoles, I'm back on track. (PS: Stablefeet insoles = magic. Expensive magic. Well worth it magic.)

Some days I have great runs where I feel great and think I can take on the world. Sometimes I feel like I want to die and yet go slogging forward wheezing and spluttering and thinking "This sucks! Where the hell is my bike? Gah!!" But then I can go home and look in the mirror and watch my gut receding away, and the next day I'll go out and slog at it again.

So that brings me up to the present. I am making slow (slow) progress. I'm up to consistently being able to run half-mile stretches and am starting to be able to control my breathing a little more and pace myself. I think it's funny that most people here at BT have no problem running a 5k or even a 10k but are completely horrified at the thought of a 1500 meter swim while I'm the total opposite. Weirdly, doing a sprint distance tri doesn't seem bad at all to me in my mind, but then I remember that I have to run three miles. Not only that, I have to run three miles AFTER swimming and biking for some challenging distances. Uh-oh. Maybe this will be a challenge after all.

So that pretty much brings me up to the present. I told you this would be super long, huh? I'd be amazed if anybody read this far. You get ten bonus points if you actually did.

It was very therapeutic and inspiring for me to get this all out into the big wide world. I look forward to running (yes running) in spirit with you all at our various races.

And anybody in Winston Salem, NC wanna train in the fall?