We’ve established at this point that I’m terrible at exercising for the sake of it. I had finished the race and met my goal. My weight had dropped from 242 lbs to 215 lbs, and I was feeling great about my level of success. I certainly wasn’t going to win any body building awards, but my blood pressure had come down and I generally speaking, I felt better on a day-to-day basis. But, I could certainly make more improvements. So, what next?
For a few weeks, I tried continuing running as I had been, but soon began to find my interest waning. My partner quit on me at that point, as he’d grown bored with the whole thing. This, of course didn’t help my motivation at all. I determined that another goal was badly needed. Thinking that if running a 5K had helped me drop 27 pounds, then training for a longer race would help me lose more weight. So, I started looking around for another run.
By this point, it was early December and most of the races for the year were over, but my search turned up a half marathon. I thought… “I’ll do that!” I told my wife what I was considering, and she told me I was nuts.
I thought about it for a few weeks, and undaunted by the naysayers, I signed up for the Total Fitness Connection Mini-Marathon. Absolutely certain that my only goal would be to finish this race, I had no aspirations of trying to generate a fast time. I kept reminding myself that baby steps were the way to go.
Time to find a training plan.
