From "Zero" to "Hero," or at least "Weirdo"

I’m not an athlete. I never was. I’m short and squat with limited agility or flexibility. I’m an average sprinter, but that’s only because I have some pretty powerful leg muscles. I can’t stop or turn quickly to save my life. I’ve always been a decently strong guy, and about the only athletic activity that I would’ve been suited for was weight-lifting (too bad I didn’t lift my first weight until i was well past 30 years old).

Ancient History

In my gradeschool years, I played little league soccer, outdoors and indoors. I was never very good. On the playground at recess, I was the kid that was always picked nearly last.

When I was in middle school, I played little league basketball. I was still not very good. We were a good team, though, and i had a good coach who still played me a reasonable amount of time. In two years of playing, I scored 9 points. Total. 4 baskets and 1 free throw--and 5 of those points came in one exhibition game. My only other memory of that basketball was fouling out of one game, with both my dad and my coach telling me that my 5th foul was “a good foul.” I had stopped a fast break.

I didn’t play sports in high school, and I certainly didn’t care for gym class. During my one year at K-State, the guys in the scholarship house where I lived (Smith House) would go play Ultimate (frisbee) all the time. I went once, and I was so out of shape that it was hell and made up excuses to never go and play with them again.

I hated running. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why anyone would want to do it. Sprinting I could sort of understand. Cross country, or any long distance, I would have rather poked out my own eyes.

California Dreaming

After I moved to California, I would play football with the guys when I could. I was a lineman, offense and defense. Didn’t have to do much but hit and be hit there. Even so, by halftime I was exhausted and by the end of the game I wanted to die.

Jesse encouraged me to learn tennis, so he started giving me lessons. After chasing a few balls, I was exhausted and couldn’t keep up. So he encouraged me to go running with him in the mornings. I tried about 3 times--we would go down the street and back, no more than a half mile. I would get back and I felt like I was about to die. Literally. I felt like my chest was collapsing and I couldn’t hardly breathe. Any time i’d try to take a deep breath, I’d break out coughing. I hated it.

I was a big guy, and I was ridiculously out of shape. I don’t know exactly, but by my guesses, I probably peaked at about 250 or 260 pounds. I turned 30, found out I had gout (a type of arthritis with very painful flare-ups). About the only real ways to control gout was diet and exercise.

Cold Turkey

I don’t know what triggered it, but one day I woke up and I decided to completely change my diet. I stopped drinking soda (I had been drinking 2-3 cans of mountain dew a day, easily--or more), I stopped eating fast food almost entirely and most other restaurant meals, and I cut back drasticly on pre-packaged and processed foods. That must’ve been about April or May of 2007, because I can remember Halloween later that year stopping by 7-11 to get my first soda in 6 months (and the only one I would have for about another 6 months). I couldn’t decided if I wanted root beer or mountain dew. I think I went with mountain dew, and had the buyer’s remorse.

Somewhere along that time, I lost my car and had to begin riding my bike to work (and anywhere else). Both Jesse and my girlfriend at the time started going to the gym, and so I went down to Fitness 19 (a couple of blocks away from home) and got a cheap gym membership and some personal trainer sessions (which were largely useless and I never even used all of them). I would go sporadically, oftentimes meet Jesse there and partner up with whatever routine he was doing that day. More or less. Him doing more, me doing less.

I hate snakes, Jock! I hate ‘em!

When I decided to hike through the mountains of Peru in 2008, I figured I outta get in a little bit better shape, so I started meeting my friends Adam and Mikey at the gym 3 days a week with a weightlifting program. We did a program including olympic lifts (cleans, jerks, etc), with weight increasing every 5 or so reps. It was the first time I went consistently. When I left for Peru, I was in the best shape of my life. Not necessarily great shape, but for me it was good. I survived the hike.

After I returned, I continued to go to the gym, but for a while it was more casual and occasional. And since I didn’t like to go in the mornings, and the gym closed before I got off work, my work schedule interfered and I rarely went. BUt I was living alone and I wanted to get back at the gym, so I decided to pony up and join 24 Hour Fitness so I could go to the gym after work. And since the only other thing I would do after work was play video games...well, I started going pretty regularly. Almost every night.

I think I smell a rat

It was during this 6 months that I started doing some serious weight-lifting. I would do squats, bench press, and one or two other lifts which I would vary daily. During that time, I was doing reps of squats and deadlifts at about 350 pounds, and benching 225. Before I would hit the weights, I would warm up with a 1-2 mile run, and then after I was done with the lifting, I would cool down with another 1 mile run.

It was also the first time I started regularly weighing myself to track my weight-loss progress. When I started that 6 month “program,” I walked into the gym at 220 pounds. After about 3 months, I’d dropped down to 200, and plateaued there at 200. It was the least I’d weighed since I walked into high school.

I went out to play flag football with the guys during this time, and I was astounded. I was faster, stronger, and didn’t wear out anywhere near as fast.

Then I changed jobs and no longer needed the late hours of 24 hour fitness, and so I slipped back into the much cheaper Fitness 19. But the heavy lifting had taken it’s toll on my body, and I was tired of heavy lifting. For the first time in years, I had evenings available and social obligations slowed the momentum I’d been using to convince myself to make it to the gym every day. It was easy to slack a little bit, and when I went I sent more time running on the treadmill and less time with the weights.

And I ran, I ran so far away, just to get away!

One day I found out my sister was training to run in a half-marathon. I downloaded her training program, and it didn’t seem nearly as bad as I’ expected. I began to strongly consider running a half of my own, and started running a little bit more on the treadmill at the gym. The treadmill is ridiculously boring to me, though, and I didn’t much care for it.

I played football one saturday morning, but as the afternoon itched along I felt like getting out there and running a little bit. So I went around the block rather than the treadmill at the gym.. Well, a 4 mile around the block.

I haven’t ran more than a mile on a treadmill since then.

One of the things that I miss about being so far away from my family is that they would often get together whenever my brother-in-law or sister or brother or whoever was participating in a race or climbing the stairs of the John Hancock or whatever, they would all get together to cheer them on. When Liz said they were coming out to California for Brad to run a half marathon in Disneyland, there was no way I was going to miss it.

I loved the weekend I spent with them and the opportunity to see what an actual race was like. I’d be thinking seriously about running my own half before that, but after that weekend I knew I was committed.

To keep myself accountable, I told everyone I knew that I was planning to run the race, and put my training program in place.

I followed the program pretty closely, and made sure to maintain a log of all my workouts (using MapMyRun.com and a home-made excel sheet). My training program (the same one Brad recomended and Liz used for her run) called for shorter runs during the week (starting at 2 miles and working up to about 6 miles) with one longer run on the weekend (4 up to 10) over a 12 week period. I stretched the program over 13 or 14 weeks, and I was very good about the daily runs during the week. I wasn’t quite as good about the longer ones, but I got them in when I could.

On February 6, 2011, after 3+ months of long training, my friend Chris and I rode out to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where Mikey G cheered us on as we ran the Kaiser Half Marathon.

The first mile sucked. I don’t know why. Chris sped off soon after the first mile-marker, but I was surprised he stuck with me that long. It was okay, i knew he was going to run faster than me. I was okay with that. After about mile 2, everything smoothed out, and I started getting into a groove. At about mile 6 1/2, running through mid-morning Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, I looked over to my right and saw a nice pond surrounded by greenery. It was gorgeous. I felt great. I hear about that “runner’s high,” and I suppose it hit me full stride about then.
Mile 8 was right after we turned out of the park and down the highway alongside the ocean. It was gorgeous running alongside the beach and the ocean, no doubt, but this is where the race started to suck. No longer under the canopy of shade from the park, the sun started beating down on us in an unseasonably warm 80+ degree san francisco day. That didn’t bother me too much, though, I was plenty hydrate and had trained in warmer temps. What bothered me was the road--it was very rough. I’m sure I was one of the very few runners who noticed--I was running in Vibram 5 Finger shoes with zero cushioning. Anyone with normal running shoes would have never noticed, but every step was agony for my feet.

The marker for mile 9 was put on the wrong side of the street, which made it appear 2 miles further away than it really was. My thighs started cramping up a little before mile 10, and that caused me to stop and stretch. A gorgeous girl in a bikini-devil outfit tried to tempt me with bacon, beer, and a mcdonald’s breakfast sandwich. I felt like that was cruel and unusual punishment, and said so to the girl running next to me at the moment. She was in the zone, and didn’t hear a word I said. I didn’t pursue the issue.

The last quarter mile was the steepest uphill grade on the entire course. I knew it was soon, but they’d put it just around a corner, so you couldn’t even see it until you were practically through it. That last half-mile was hell. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. I was tired. Putting left in front of right and repeating seemed more trouble than it was worth, but the end was so close that you couldn’t stop or slow down.

But I crossed the finish line. Just a little over 2 hours and 20 minutes. My stretch goal had been between 2:10 and 2:15, my realistic goal was under 2:30, and the most important goal was finishing, period. 2 out of 3 aint bad...and I feel like I could have hit that 2:15 with better road conditions. Any way around it, I was completely happy with those results. Ask me then, say “Nate when are you going to run your next one?” My answer then, said, “Hell no. Not gonna happen.”

Pow! Right in the kisser’!

I took a week completely off from running or working out after the race. I had exected to be sore the next few days. I felt fine. I felt no different than any other day i’d gone on a 4 mile run. I definitely expected something different. I took a week off anyway.

I started mixing in weight lifting with shorter runs (and by shorter, I mean 4 miles instead of the 6 i was doing most days before the race), but I really wasn’t that into it. I was definately looking for something new as far as my fitness routine.

Mike Spain had been looking for a martial arts program to join and we’d talked about it a little bit. I even joined him for Aikido once, but neither one of us took to it very well. I felt so unsatisfied after the Aikido class that I went up to the gym and did some power lifting. Then he calls me up one day and says, “Nate, I joined this gym in Santa Clara (The Academy of Self Defense) to study Krav Maga. I freakin love it. YOu have got to come by and try it, they offer 2 weeks of free trial classes.” I told him I would go the next monday.

I’ve gone to 2-3 classes each week since then. The other day I told Ev, the senior instructor at ASD, that before I started Krav, I would’ve said I could hold my own in any given fight. After a simple 4 months of training, I know I was wrong. Sure, against someone else who didn’t know anything it would’ve been a wash, but it would’ve sucked for both of us. Now, i am by no means an expert or anything, but I know what to do. Against the average guy on the street, i’m pretty sure i’d wreck somebody’s shop. I’d walk away in better condition than the other guy...not necessarily untouched, but I’d rather be me than them.

Classes usually start with about a half-hour of conditioning & warm up, which usually consists of “run around the room randomly and when I tell you, punch the bag until I tell you to stop.” They mix this in with a smattering of push ups, situps, burpees, planks, and whatever other no-fun ab/leg workout they can muster. Don’t forget to scan your surroundings (you never know when your opponent has friends nearby--or the instructor’s waiting to whack you on the back of the head), and keep your hands up...you like your face, don’t you, don’t want anyone to smack it! Oftentimes we’ll do resistance training, where a partner holds onto a belt around your waist, pulling you back while you try to run forward or punch or whatever.

After working up a good sweat for half an hour, we “cool down” with some technique work. At the introduction level, they show us how to deal with common situations you run into in a self-defense situation. We learn how to deal with chokes and punches, posturing and pushing, headlocks and other times where you’ve screwed up and found yourself entagled. We’ve even learned some techniques to deal with (and disarm) knives and guns. Of course, the standard punches, elbows, hammerfists, knees, that sort of thing.

It’s a lot of fun. On top of a good workout, you learn practical, useful ways to respond to some worst-case scenarios & situations. The instructors are all excellent. In addition to being friendly and fun, they’re going to push you and teach you. Plus, it’s a good workout to mix in alongside the training for running my second half marathon.

The definition of insanity

I’m pretty sure Chris & I vowed never to run another race again right after the Kaiser Half. I’m also pretty sure we both started our training for the next one in October (the San Jose Rock’n’Roll half marathon). As I told my roommate the other day...the worst part about running your second half marathon? You’ve got to do better than the first!

On the first one, my only goal was completion. During my training I wasn’t overly concerned with pace or times. No such luck this time. What does that mean? Spending some time on the tracks doing speed training. Pushing myself harder on my daily runs. Some mock runs at race-ish conditions during the last month. Or something like that. Looks like we’ll have to see how that goes!