About 2 years ago I weighed around 235 pounds. This is considered overweight by the BMI Index. Around this time, my wife made the very astute decision to drag our collective butts to a gym and join it that day. Which led us to the gym we belong to now. There, after signing up, I found a treadmill. Exercise and me to this point did not mix. A chronic off and on smoker since 14, let’s just say that in my mind the only real reason to run is because your being chased. And this just doesn’t happpen anymore. And when it does, you’re usually in a car, THANK GOD.

So let’s just say I found the treadmill. There was no manna from heaven that shone down on it, no trumpets calling it to me. Just it, standing there looking rather dumbly.

“I’m a complex machine” says Mr. Treadmill.

“No you’re not. You’re a glorified hamster wheel.” says Naive Josh.

“Huh…. I bet you I’m more than that.”

“What’s the wager?”

“Give me 4 months” cries Mr. Treadmill.

“You’re on! And you’re a two part machine!”

“But I have a LCD screen! and a infographic about heart rate vs. age index!!”

“Don’t play into my love of infographics!!”

“Don’t hit me!!”

———————–

This back and forth went on for 2 more minutes as I realized I was having a conversation with an inanimate object and I reluctantly stepped on the machine. Let’s see, I think I picked the “Fat Burn” setting. Hey, this machine knows what I want to do. I like usability! This might not be too bad. I set it for the maximum of 30 minutes and started walking. The speed gradually went up to 4.5 mph and I was doing pretty good. I wasn’t sweating that much, but I put my hands on the heart rate monitor and I was getting up there. I scanned the heart rate vs. age index….. OK. Ok. I’m at the optimal heart rate for my age. Hey… this is EASY! Exercise…. man, this is not so bad after all. I can actually do this and maintain a breathe-filled conversation with my wife.

Kate comes over after doing her work out.

“Are you ready to go?”

“Hang….. on…… this….. thing…. says…. I have…. like……. (Strong inhale) about……. 10 more…… minutes.” I gasped.

“Ok. I’ll meet you downstairs.” she says as she leaves to go get some water.

10 minutes pass and I successfully had walk/run a mile, maybe a little more. And I was covered in sweat. And I could hardly breathe.

But…..

I FELT AMAZING!! As I obligatorally wiped down the machine, my leg muscles twitched and snapped like they had electric running through them and for a split second I felt like Lee Majors during the opening of The Million Dollar Man. ….We can build it. We have the technology.

This was a turning point in my life. I traded in 4 Dr. Peppers a day to 2 or 3 DIET Dr. Peppers mixed with 1000 gallons of water (Ok, not that much.) a day.

Since then, running has helped my stress levels, my focus, my confidence in my ability to change my body and stamina, and an overall sense that it’s NOT too late to change, and that every day is a new day. I’ve condensed these things into lists, because the internet and lists are like Starsky and Hutch, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or Robots and Zombies.

6 Things I’ve learned from Running.

1) Measure success by setting goals.

I don’t know how well my pace is, unless I am measuring one of two things, time or heart rate. Unless you measure yourself against something, you won’t know if you’re successful or not. Life is too short to measure yourself against everyone you meet, but I don’t think that it’s all that bad to desire to change. If you want to change something about yourself you must first realize that you need to measure out some goals.

2) Pace Yourself.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’re not going to be able to clear 1 mile let alone 2 or 3 for a long time. So don’t even try. Know yourself and most importantly be honest with yourself about your skills and abilities. The minute you try to over reach someone will call you out on your BS or you will forget to stretch and be out of the game for 3 weeks.

3) Find your rhythm and listen to your own music.

I 99.9 percent of the time run to music. It helps keep the pace, usually I listen to something very fast. The point is, don’t listen to people telling you you can’t do it. Half the time I am either running between 9 and 10 mph or walking, because of something called speed intervals. You need to remain focused on the goal and ignore all other distractions in order to do this or you’ll eat teeth. Don’t spend any more time then you have to listening to people who say you can’t do something. Chances are you can, and they just don’t want you to do it because you’re faster, stronger and leaner than them and they don’t want anyone to know it. Including you.

4) Don’t overdue it and remember to stretch.

Remember, you’re in this life for the long haul. If you keep moving from one thing to another and not pacing yourself you’ll burn out. In running, you hit a plateau where you can’t really go any further. In order to combat this, you must stretch, and you have to push yourself but not overdue it. Running fast is a good thing, but take it easy every once in awhile and remember where you are at in your journey. Are you keeping pace with others around you? It’s not the fact that you get there quicker than everyone else, it’s that you got there at all and are able to get past that point.

5) Push yourself past what you’re comfortable with.

When I first starting running, I was running around a mile at a time. I’m up to 3 miles in 30 minutes averaging around 7 to 8 minutes per mile. I would say that this is something you should do any chance you get in other areas of life. It’s like adding strength in your muscles. The only way that you’ll do that is by pushing yourself past what you’re comfortable with. In work, in relationships, in life;  it’s important to know yourself, but it’s also important to move past what you are comfortable with because that’s where you grow the most. Let your gaurd down…. you’ll be amazed at what you can do.

6) Tools don’t replace hard work.

There are tribes in parts of the world that run miles and miles with nothing on there feet whatsoever. Then in western culture you have specially designed shoes made for the WAY you run, inline, rolling your foot inward, etc. This goes to the point that tools don’t replace hard work. Pagemaker apparently revolutionized the way everyone is able to do desktop publishing. But it didn’t make the entire country graphic designers. You still have to go to school, learn, and buckle down and get stuff done with the tools you have.

So that’s it, I hope that this post was a good read. I may do more of these. Like I said, the internet and I both love lists.

UPDATE: I’m up to about 3 miles or so per 30 minutes. I’m thinking about training for a 5k… but REALLY doing it this time. Anyone else doing that? Want to push each other to get motivated??