Clydesdale: Overweight Runners AKA Clydes

I am what runners call a Clydesdale.  Seriously.  I am too large to be pounding my knees and grinding what's left of my ankles.  I don't even pretend to be a middle of the pack runner.  My kids walk faster than I can jog.  I am a big man.

But...

I am not as large as I once was.  I have been working at becoming healthy over the last year and a half.  Being told to drop 120 pounds or be dead by 50 (I'm 39) has certainly caught my attention.  I've lost about half of what I needed to, then got sidetracked by a new medication that was 100% guaranteed to put weight back on.  20 pounds...in one month.  That was last September and I'm still trying to shed myself of that memory as well has the pounds (and I'm no longer taking that med).

I would have never guessed just how much I could enjoy exercise, let alone running.  Before I was a Clydesdale, I was a Couch Potato(e) beginning to go bad.  Part of the reason why I became a librarian was to avoid hard work you know.  Exercise meant sweating on purpose.  Of course, I sweat anyway just getting up off the couch to go pop another bag of corn.

Then, the whole break a leg, discover a bad heart during surgery thing happened and the specter of an early departure from this world happened in early 2008.  It took about another year to just be cleared to start an exercise program.  By that time I had no money to do something expensive like a home gym from Chuck Norris.  Running was the only thing I remotely found satisfying when I was younger, but I was terrified of ruining my beautiful knees.

Enter in the CoolRunning Couch to 5K program and DJ Beatsmith's Podrunner 1st Day to 5K mixes for my Mp3 player.  I started jogging one minute at a stretch in May of 2009.  By August I was running 30 minutes without collapsing.  And I finished my first 5K race in October last fall.

Goal achieved.

Motivation lost.

Couch invites me back into it's warm embrace.

I'm doing my best to get back out there.  My goal for 2010 is to run a 5K in June, July, August, and September of this year.  I will be satisfied if I can achieve 50% of that modest plan, but I will fight to compete each month.

You're welcome to come along if you want.