Introductions

So, I'd like to introduce myself. My name's Dave. I'm 32 years old, I work in coffee for a living, I'm married to a beautiful woman named Sarah, and I have a lovely 7-month-old daughter named Eleanor.

Beautiful wife, beautiful daughter

I've been running semi-regularly for maybe 3 or 4 years, running various distances from 5k to 100 miles (actually, 106. I got lost.). I've had what I feel to be modest personal success. I'm certainly not setting any course records, but I've laid down some decent middle of the pack times. I've run sub 5 hours for a 50k in tough conditions (and hope to drastically improve that time this year). I've managed an 8:19 50 miler, and I buckled at the Old Dominion 100, running a 23:49, which

Old Dominion 100, June 2012

included those extra 6 miles. I'll come back to that 100 time in a later post.

To set the stage for this blog, let me tell you a bit about my background as an athlete, and from a weight perspective.

I was always involved in sports from a young age. I was a 3 sport letterman in high school (soccer, wrestling, track and field), and continued to pole vault for a year in college before I was forced to transfer. I never had to worry about what I ate. My weight never changed (always around 160), and I burned everything off. I was essentially a human garbage disposal. Seriously, I cannot tell you how many boxes of Hamburger Helper I ate in college.

As I left college, I pretty much stopped all physical activity. And for a while, I was fine. My metabolism kept up with me, and my eating habits never changed. Around the age of 26, that all changed...

When you gain weight, you often don't notice it for a while, especially if you never use the scale sitting in the corner of your bathroom. Changes in my body shape occurred little bit by little bit, until one day I stepped on the scale and cringed a little bit. 197. Only 3 pounds short of the big deuce. That was a wake-up call.

I started off thinking that I'd like to become active in a sport again, and triathlons sounded cool. I had read several places that swimming is a really good way to lose weight and get in shape with minimal impact of joints. So I joined a gym with a pool, and put together a workout schedule.

Well, that only lasted a few months. Turns out swimming back and forth in a pool sort of sucks. I did manage to drop some weight, however, and get down to about 180 pounds.

It was about this time that I started to hear a bunch of stories about ultra running from my wife's father. Turns out he's a grizzly vet who's managed to finish 30+ 100's. Listening to him talk about his races and experiences, I was hooked. I just had to try it for myself. I wanted to test my limits, and see what was possible.

From here, I started training for a marathon (Columbus, 3:29:xx), then straight on to my first 50k (Bigfoot, 5:46:xx). From there, it was on to multiple 50k's, 50 milers, and (so far) a single 100 mile race.

In my next post, I'll talk about diet, training, the awful mistakes I've made, and what curious people do to get faster.

-Dave