Armed with a desire to have a six-pack and live to be 100 I began to run. I ran two miles and was quite out of breath, but it felt good to put in hard effort. The next 4 days my workouts consisted of walk and lift weights. By lift weights I mean pick up light weights because I was unwilling to have the rest of my body be as sore as my legs (especially calves) were.
I also changed my diet. I ate smaller portions and drank a lot more water. No weight came off for a little over a week, but that was probably due to some swelling of my unprepared muscles. Swelled and sore muscles hang on to water in order to aide the healing process.
After 5 days I tried running again. I took it a little slower (not much) and started getting shin splints. For the next six weeks I just pushed through the shin splints until I reached a point that I couldn't do it anymore. I had dropped 8 lbs and wanted to keep going. My body refused. Even walking was painful, so I took a few weeks off. This was near the end of December 2009 and I did not lose any more weight that year.
January arrived and with it came New Years' Resolutions: "Get a six-pack."
I signed up for the Capitol City Half Marathon in Olympia, WA that would take place in May 2010. I began running 2-3 miles twice a week, making sure to keep it slow enough that I wouldn't get shin splints. After a few more months I was down to 213 pounds. *Note- almost all my weight loss to this point was due to exercise, not diet.
As May approached, I set a goal to finish the 13.1 miles in under 2:11:00 because that would be a 6.0 MPH average. Much of my training was based on a Heart Rate Monitor that I purchased in April. The basic gist of my training was "stay above 160 BPM." In retrospect, it really wasn't the best training plan ever created, but it did get me to the starting line.
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