Pursuit of my Passon
I’m not famous. Probably will never be. Most people don’t know me, but if you ask the people that have ever met me most refer to me as “that crazy running guy”. I love running more than most people love their pets. 90% of my favorite websites or books have something to do with running. I have read Dean Karnazes’ “Ultra-Marathon Man” book 5 times. My internet history browser looks like I am doing research projects for the editor of Runner’s World. I keep every magazine that I have ever bought just because “there’s this one article that I may use sometime”. I have the elevation maps of Leadville, HardRock and Western States hanging on my cube wall. Running is where I can get out of my head and relax. I look forward to my 20 mile runs as a way to get outside and enjoy the world that God has created. But if you met me today you wouldn’t know that my story isn’t much different from most other people when they go off to college and that’s where the pursuit of my purpose began.
When we go to college, we’re all warned of the "Freshman 15" with the new found freedom of late night pizza calls and the discovery of “adult beverages”. I was no exception to that rule. In high school, I was an “athlete”. I put athlete in quotes because to this day I don’t consider my high school history of athletics to be anything to brag about. Sports have never come easy to me. I was always a “husky” kid. I often refer to my time playing football as “Yeah, I played football. I was an End, a Guard and a Tackle. I sat at the end of the bench, guarded the water and tackled anyone that came near it”. I went out for football, basketball, baseball and golf every year but was very lucky if I played…EVER. I went out for sports for the social aspect. All of my friends played, and most of them were very good. Much like most high school kids, I just wanted to be lumped into the category of athlete instead of “Band Dork” (which I was). Even back then I was bigger than most kids tipping the scale at 180 lbs and with overweight parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc I knew that I was doomed.
I went to college determined not to gain the “Freshman 15” that everyone was fated for. I enjoyed playing basketball so my friend and I decided that we would play basketball every day. Well, you know how that story goes. Classes get in the way, social life gets in the way, girlfriend gets in the way, yada yada yada. Needless to say it didn’t really pan out and the weight came on.
As life moves so fast you never really stop to look at yourself in the mirror and realize how much weight you are really gaining. When I needed new clothes, I went and bought them. I didn’t really pay much attention to the sizes. I just bought what fit. Nobody said anything to me. I never went to the doctor because I rarely got sick (not sure how that happened). My weight never really got brought up as a concern. As I was preparing for my wedding I decided to lose some weight. I knew that I had some to lose so I started working out sporadically. I played racquetball, jumped on the elliptical or the bike every once in a while and did notice that I was losing some weight. A few months later I got married and BOOM the weight went right back on…plus some. I was fat, depressed, stressed out about school, newly married, had no motivation to do anything and genuinely hated life. I was your typical stress eater and found comfort in food. I had no purpose for my life. I couldn’t walk without getting tired, couldn’t sleep, my back and knees hurt all of the time and didn’t want to be in pain any longer. I contemplated suicide on numerous occasions because there wasn’t really a point in sticking around. I was fat. No one would care if I was gone. But I did find that if I made fun of how fat I was I could get a laugh out of people and no one could tell what I was going through inside.
In 2004 I got a job working for an insurance company as my first big time, non-college job. I went into the job knowing absolutely nothing about insurance. The first 3 months were probably the most stressful months of my life. With a new job comes new stress from learning the industry, new people to impress, new occasions to celebrate, office food days and late nights at the local watering holes. I have a fun-loving personality and have been known as a person that likes to be recognized for doing goofy things. If you had a food challenge for me and it would get a laugh out of people or some attention, I would do it. I was the person that could be dared to drink a 2-liter bottle of pop as fast as possible and would do it without even thinking. Endless pancakes at IHOP, no problem, let’s break the record. You want me to eat a large pizza by myself, SURE. Box of macaroni & cheese in the cupboard? That sounds like a great snack. Food was AMAZING and being fat is where I found my stardom amongst my peers. Maybe this was my purpose?
In the Fall of 2004 came the Iowa State Fair and all of the incredibly healthy food that’s being served (insert sarcasm here). My wife’s family has a long standing tradition of camping during the fair so it isn’t uncommon for us to go 3 or 4 times each year. This year we went 4 times and I ate like a king every time. My favorite food? Turkey legs. They are incredible and you feel like a caveman walking around with meat juice dripping from your chin. We went into the fair on the last day knowing that this would be our last chance for a year to eat our favorite foods and today was not going to disappoint. The following list is not a menu from the entire fair, this is what I ate during one day:
- 2 Turkey legs – 1400 calories and 60 grams of fat (each)
- Funnel Cake – 800 calories, 44g fat
- Corn Dog – 460 calories, 19g fat
- Fried Twinkie – 361 calories, 28g fat
- Gyro – 680 calories, 40g fat
- Giant pickle – 32 calories
- 2 Lemonades – 210 calories (each)
- 6 pack of beer
When we went back to our apartment I felt like garbage, but was proud of my accomplishment. My wife’s grandparents decided to stop over before heading home. After sitting down and chatting for a while, her grandmother wanted to snap a picture with her new digital camera. Now, I must clarify this. I was a journalism major in college and loved to take pictures, but hated to be in them. She snapped the picture and said “Oh, you guys look so cute. Here take a look.” Those words will haunt me for the rest of my life. It had probably been a year or better since I had seen myself in a picture. I looked at it and didn’t even recognize the man standing next to this beautiful lady. Who was that??? I was so embarrassed of what I looked like. I knew something had to change.
Completely humiliated I went to work the next day knowing there would a chance I could die before I hit 30. That reaction may have been a little dramatic but too real none-the-less. I did some research and found a diet book that I wanted to try. It wasn’t some fad or anything like that, it just broke out the calories, fat and carbs of everything you could ever eat and helped to create a plan to lose weight. I told my wife of my intention and I don’t think I have ever seen her happier. I cut my caloric intake down from almost 4,000 calories (on a light day) to 1,500. Before I got the book I would eat 3-4 eggs every morning, 120-160 ounces of regular Mt. Dew every day, 2-3 slices of pizza for lunch, homemade chicken wings for supper and wash it down with a 6’r of beer. I finally had a plan and I was sticking to it. Without having a scale, and not wanting to buy one, I went to the doctor to get a check up. I hadn’t been to the doctor in almost 5 years so this was a little nerve racking. When he came in with the results of my blood work and my chart, his face didn’t look good. He read the numbers and said that I was 295 lbs, pre-diabetic, my blood pressure was off the charts and had a BMI at almost 40. Keep in mind that this appointment was probably a week after I changed my eating habits so I had already lost some weight. If you’re calculating, that’s nearly 120 lbs in 6 years (most of that was in college). When I went home I started to look at my clothes. I had purchased pants the week before. Size 44. My 2XL shirts were a little tight. The soles of my shoes were caving on the outside. What…had…I….done???
After about a week of my new diet, my wife said “let’s go for a run”. We had a ½ mile track near our apartment and she would go run there quite often. I resisted quite a bit because growing up I HATED to run. Why run when you can drive a car or a bike. But I threw on some old shoes and went out with her. I went half way around the ½ mile track (for you math majors that is ¼ mile) and threw up…VIOLENTLY. I decided that this running thing was stupid and I wasn’t ever going to do it again. A couple of days later, my wife said “let’s try it again.” As I am such a gentleman, I decided to give it another chance since she was so cute and convincing. This time, I made it one lap and thought “hey, this isn’t so bad after all. Let’s do another lap” and that was when the bug hit me. I decided that I was going to sign up for a 5K. I don’t know if I had run 3.1 miles collectively over the previous 6 years let alone training to do it in one shot. I was going to train for it and make the most of it. As I started to run more often something magical happened, my clothes were getting loser. I wasn’t so tired all of the time. I wasn’t depressed like I had been for years. I could walk up and down stairs without breathing heavy. I was sleeping better. Maybe these crazy runners had something here.
I started running over lunch breaks, at nights, on weekends. It consumed my life and hasn’t stopped since. People began to see a change in my life and not just on the physical side. I am truly happy and it shows. My weight loss was simple. Don’t eat as much and exercise. There have been no fad diets, no lipo, and no fancy exercise machine (other than my treadmill in my basement). I have been able to keep off about 90 lbs and have never felt better in all of my life. I have created training plans and successfully coached 20 different people to train and run 5k’s to marathons. I, myself, have run an Ultra-Marathon, ran 80 miles of a 300+ mile relay across Iowa raising money for an orphanage in South Africa, ran 2 marathons, five 20k’s, and a ridiculous amount of 10 and 5k’s. I love running so much that I have started a running clubs at work that encourages people of all abilities to run and have dipped my toes into the realm of race director creating the Run for the Pines Relay across Iowa. I believe that what running has done for me is finally given me that purpose that I was looking for and couldn’t find sitting on my couch. It has taught me that I am a child of God, a husband, a father, a coach and most certainly a runner.
Stay Stong, Run Long,
Tha Messenjah
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