Blubber To Runner

(NSFW language)

So I’ve got about two weeks before my 3rd half-marathon, and to say that my training hasn’t been consistent would be an understatement. Not to say that there’s been no training, but my runs haven’t been amazing, my diet has matched my runs… it’s just been very underwhelming.

Why?  To be honest, I wasn’t very sure.

Until today.

I went for a run today – it’s a beautiful day, wanted to do 4-6 miles. So I got started, and I was all over the place – my brain was just going NON-STOP with information. I couldn’t stop thinking… couldn’t shut it off. What was my pace… how far had I gone… I’m not gonna be ready for this race… how am I gonna hydrate for the race… maybe I should just not do it… is everything ok with my hotel room… how am I gonna do this race by myself… so I stopped and sat down.  I had been running for only about 6 minutes.

And then I had a gahdamn epiphany.

Seriously – for some reason, something clicked for me…

I AM THINKING WAY TOO DAMN MUCH.

I’m in my own fucking head sabotaging myself. And what’s crazy is that I’m doing it in EVERY PART OF MY LIFE. I talk myself out of so many different things even before I do them; I talk myself out of job opportunites even before I walk into the interview. I tell myself I don’t want to try X or Y because I already ‘know’ I won’t enjoy it – or people won’t enjoy me being there. I don’t write anymore because seriously, nobody wants to keep hearing about me this much – plus I tell my wife everything I’m feeling… we talk about it, and that’s that.

I mean, I can literally talk myself out of ANYTHING – and it’s debilitating.

So I decided to stop worrying. And I’m going to keep trying to not worry. And it started with my run.

I turned off my RunKeeper, I turned off my running playlist and I just ran. I have no idea how far. I kinda have an idea of how long. I just ran until I didn’t want to anymore, then I stopped and walked back to the car.

AND IT FELT REALLY, REALLY GREAT.

Now, I know this whole issue with the “voice inside my head” isn’t a new thing… I’ve been fighting myself for years. Sometimes it gets the better of me, other times I beat it’s ass back. But right now, in this moment, I’m making a conscious choice to not listen to the negativity and change the voices attitude to one of positivity and motivation.

So today I’m putting together a quick 2 week half-marathon plan… just to help me get the endurance & stamina up again before the big day. Every day starting this Saturday will have either a run, a workout, or both. All helping me get to this race.  Plus, I remember that I started writing for me… and I kinda forgot that.

So I’m probably gonna write some more. Take a few pics. Post some motivational shit on my page. Because you know what? I NEED IT. I hope you guys like it too, because I think you guys are great. And I’m sorry I haven’t put myself out there as much I had been. I go in and out of my head a lot… it’s not easy for me!

(PS – sorry if this is kinda all over the place… I’m ridin’ the wave!)

So…

Lots of things goin’ on over here.  And this post is regarding the most important – my marriage.

🙂

Yes, the marriage that began in this here blog has FINALLY happened!  I have a couple of pics of my bee-you-tee-full wife and I on our awesome wedding day throughout the post… couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.

One of the things we have learned together on our journey was that we really need to make commitments.  Commitments to ourselves, our relationship and, eventually, our future family.  To that end… instead of traditional vows at our wedding ceremony, we instead decided to write out our Vision and share it with our friends & family.

Our vision is not set in stone – we’ll be adding as our life changes and grows together.  But, for where we are right now, these are the things that are important to us.  And, since this blog really played such an important part of our lives together, I think it’s only fair that I share that vision with you all!  This is very personal to me – and to us – but all of you reading this are such a major part of what I’ve been able to do with my life, I want you to help hold this vision for us as we start our life together.

Without further ado, Our Vision:

“Today and always I commit that I will hold this Vision for our journey through life together.

I lead a healthy and active lifestyle.

I stay grounded and connected to the divine within me and all around me.

I nurture ever-growing passion, intimacy and connection with you.

I grow through life’s challenges with grace and integrity and will learn from every lesson.

I use the gifts I’ve received from all of my relationships to create a loving, bonded and healthy family.

I know that my willingness to allow abundance to flow will create a prosperous life for us.

I will be my best, do my best and give my best.

I show up for me, for you, for us and our family.”

Thank you all for being such a great support system for me… I can’t easily express how much I truly appreciate it.

This past weekend, two things bothered me.  A lot.  I couldn’t get them out of my head.  I thought about them all weekend – until Sunday afternoon when I broke down.  I cried.  I had an ‘epiphany’ of sorts.  They awakened something in me that made me realize I need to be better.

—–

~ My father is retiring.  50 years of working with custom kitchens and bathrooms in a family owned business and he is closing the doors.  He is one of the strongest men I know – and right now he can’t lift his arm over his head.  He also can barely kneel his knees are so bad.  In my opinion, he needs physical therapy daily… but he won’t do it.  Why?  Because he’s my Dad and, in his generation, that would be a sign of weakness.  And one thing my father is not is weak.  So… we’re at the shop with my brother and we’re taking out a kitchen and what is he doing?  He’s carrying cabinets all around- AND USING A HAMMER TO BREAK UP A GRANITE COUNTERTOP.  He can’t lift his arms without excruciating pain, yet he STILL won’t ask for help from myself OR my brother, who are both more than able to do this.  We make him stop.

A few months ago I asked him how he got so bad.  His response?  In a nutshell – when he was young, he was indestructible.  He kneeled on hard floors and concrete slabs for hours a day and didn’t wear any kneepads or kneel on a pad because, seriously, who does THAT?!?!   He carried huge cabinets on his own without asking for help because, c’mon, he can totally lift it himself!  He swung a hammer close to 200 x’s/ day for 50 years, and didn’t even think about the consequences.  That’s NOT a natural motion or impact your arm is designed for.  But he was big… and strong… so what could happen???  Right now, my brother does the exact same shit.  My brother is in crazy ridiculous shape but, regardless of that, he sees what ‘hulking around’ did to my father and yet STILL does the EXACT SAME THINGS.

~  My friend is morbidly obese.  The other day, he posted on his Facebook wall that he was headed to the hospital and to wish him luck.  We’re not as close as we used to be, but I still care about him and his battle with obesity.  I ask what happened.  He says he has numbness in his legs.  Later in the day he posts an update that tests came back normal and he now has a walker to help build the strength in his legs again.  He has gotten so heavy he can’t carry around his body weight.

A few years ago he had surgery to help with his weight.  He started losing pounds by the dozens, and he and I sat on his back porch for an entire afternoon and talked about what he needed to do mentally in order to not only continue to lose weight, but to keep it off for good.  Hell, I even took off from work that afternoon when our chat started getting serious because it was so important to me to have this conversation with him I didn’t want to leave.  He was willing to listen, but wasn’t open to therapy.  I insisted that losing weight wasn’t going to make him happy, but being happy was going to help him lose weight. “Nope, doesn’t work” he kept telling me.  Instead, he bought a treadmill and THAT was gonna help him keep it off.  He’s now put the weight weight back on – maybe even more – and is using a walker to get around.

—–

So… back to my weekend.  Because of these two instances I couldn’t get these three questions out of my head:

WHY IN THE HELL DOES NO ONE ASK FOR HELP!?!?!

WHO IN THE HELL ARE WE PROVING SOMETHING TO BY TRYING TO DO THINGS OURSELVES?!?!

BY NOT ASKING FOR HELP WHAT IN GOD’S NAME DOES ANY ONE ACCOMPLISH?!?!

I’m so frustrated seeing all these people I know/ love/ care about falling apart because the most they choose to do is post passive-aggressive statuses on Facebook to hopefully get enough ‘likes’ and “you go, you’re so strong!” comments that they can sleep an extra hour that night.  They incessantly tell anyone willing to listen how resilient they are, while everyone they’re telling is talking about them with each other wondering when they’re gonna hit rock bottom.  I’ve told many of these people things they didn’t want to hear, even ruining the relationship I had with them in the process, because I did what every friend says they’ll do – yet mostly fail to do when the time comes; I tell them what they NEED to hear, not what they want to hear.

The thing that REALLY struck me about this though was – I’m the exact same way.  I’m terrified to ask for help because, to me, it’s a sign of weakness.  It shows that I’m not ‘strong’ enough to handle whatever life throws at me on my own, like apparently “everyone else” does.  It was an overwhelming weekend for me… it’s hard when you have a moment of self-realization like that… but one that I hoped would help me deal with these issues with more clarity in the near future.

Then Monday came.

I got the message around 1pm.  My friend (and co-host with my former podcast No Filter Radio) Chris texted me:

“I don’t know if you’ve heard what’s going on.  But if not I need you to call me”

I called, and that’s when I found out another one of our co-hosts, Mark, passed away in his sleep.  He was 33 years old and leaves behind a wife, two children and countless friends.  33.  I’m 39.  I have no kids, but can’t wait to have some.  I’m not married but can’t wait to make Jennifer my wife.  THIRTY-THREE.

At this point, I have no idea what the cause of death is.  And, to be honest, it doesn’t matter in the context of this conversation.  He’s gone.  And all I could do after that phone call was sit in my office, cry and think of those exact same questions from this weekend:

WHY IN THE HELL DOES NO ONE ASK FOR HELP!?!?!

WHO IN THE HELL ARE WE PROVING SOMETHING TO BY TRYING TO DO THINGS OURSELVES?!?!

BY NOT ASKING FOR HELP WHAT IN GOD’S NAME DOES ANY ONE ACCOMPLISH?!?!

But I added one more:

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?!?!

I think it’s time we all stop screwing around with ourselves.  Seriously.  It’s over.  Time to stop being the victims in our own lives and start taking ownership of what we need to do to become the best people we can be.  From now on, I’m asking for help whenever I need it.  I’m done.  It’s not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength.  And if you don’t feel that way?  Well, maybe it’s time you found some other people to surround yourselves with.  I could lose people I genuinely care about because they’re too proud to ask for help – and that’s just some bullshit.  I’m going to marry a wonderful woman, start a beautiful family and I’ll be DAMNED if I am going to do ANYTHING to myself that prevents me from being around to enjoy this life I’m creating for myself as much as humanly possible.  I’m tired of being a victim.  It’s time to be a success story.  I read that this weekend in a blog, and after the weekend I had it couldn’t ring more true.

I’m not training for races anymore…  I’ll still race, but I’m training to live.

To my friend Mark… REST IN PEACE.  Please know how much you will be missed by myself and so many others.  Your memory will live on in your music, our shows and will ALWAYS live on in my blog.

Why will his memory live on in my blog?

Well… he created my logo.

So… as part of Project Transformation, my whole diet has changed.  Oddly enough, I’m eating MORE than I was previously.  It’s weird to think… actually, BELIEVE… that by eating more quantity-wise, yet smarter food than I was before, that I will actually lose more weight. I’m still getting comfortable with that idea, but as Jen and I were spending a few hours in the kitchen prepping my meals for the week (well, OUR meals b/c she’s not only helping me with it, she’s doing much of it with me as well), we started talking about Super Bowl Sunday.

( <— And yes, that’s some of the beautiful work we were doing.)

As we all know, the Super Bowl is not only a sports holiday, but an eating holiday as well. 🙂  Well, we realized that we can’t have all the fun foods we’d REALLY like to have so we started trying to figure out cool eats to enjoy.  I did what I always do – Googled.  And I found a bunch of stuff!  But then it dawned on me:

Why don’t I share these cool ideas/ recipes with everyone.

And what better way to do so, then everyones favorite recipe sharing website – PINTEREST.

So here’s what I am doing; I started a board – and called it SUPER HEALTHY SUPER SUNDAY (pretty clever, right?  RIGHT???) and all through this next week I’m not only gonna add additional ideas to it for everyone to get stuff ready for their own Super Sunday, but I want to post your recipes as well!

Here’s what you need to do… if you’re on Pinterest, FOLLOW THE BOARD!  And, also, for any cool recipes you find, do one of the following:

*  Post your recipe in the comments section here,

* Post them on my Facebook page, or

* Email them to me at blubbertorunner@gmail.com.

And I’ll get them on the Pinterest board and make sure I share the board a few times during the week so you guys can prep accordingly.  I know this is gonna help me… and I hope it proves helpful to y’all as well.

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME QUINOA!!!

** TWO NOTES – If you use Pinterest, send me the link that way so it’s easiest to repin… if not, I’ll take care of it for you!  Also, if you don’t use Pinterest, you can still view the board via the link! **

When I first started this waaaay back when, I was the most out of shape guy on the treadmill. I was surrounded by all different types of people – Old, young… men, women… great shape, out of shape… it was a smorgasbord.  But, no matter how you sliced it, I was the biggest.  At first that hung me up.  I got REAL self-conscious about it too… I started running outside more, avoiding the gym as much as I could.  I tried to get people to meet me at the gym so I wouldn’t be alone.

Typical anxiety, but it crippled me – until I realized no one cared.

I realized that everyone is so focused on their insecurities that they could honestly care less about mine.  That this whole situation was more of my OWN issues than anybody else’s.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to strength training last week… IT ALL CAME BACK LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN FROM HELL.

I’ve made no secret about the fact that I’m not the strongest guy in the world. I was sedentary for YEARS and then, when I started running… I ran. I didn’t lift weights.  I didn’t do squats.  I ran.  I mean, I got SOMETHING but, in my opinion, not what you’d expect from a guy of my stature.  So, when I was selected for Project Transformation, I knew what I wanted my focus to be on – STRENGTH TRAINING.  I mean, have you SEEN Ryan Hughes?  If I’m gonna learn how to do it and do it right, he’s the dude to learn it from.

(Oh, and ladies… you’re welcome for the links.)

Day 1 of weight training?  Not an issue – it was Legs.  And, of everything I’m self-conscious about, my leg strength isn’t one of them. So no worries here.  I busted them out and felt good.  Friday?  That was shoulders and arms.  And I was anxious about it ALL DAY.  I was meeting Joe, so at least I was gonna be doing it WITH someone, but all that anxiety I had when I first started running on the treadmill came roaring back.

Why?  Because this situation was DIFFERENT – this was ALL guys, all at various levels of ‘great shape’ (including Joe)… and me.  Still overweight, and not very strong.  I fought through it, but it was tough.  I felt like everyone was watching us, because I was so far behind them.  It was REALLY tough for me – couldn’t leave the gym fast enough.

So… CAN YOU SEE HOW RIDICULOUS I AM?!?!

That didn’t happen.  I mean, I THOUGHT it happened… but it didn’t.  I bet Joe’s reading this right now and like ‘Bro, are you serious?’ because I, like MANY people, create these absolutely crazy scenarios in my head.  But, in going back and reading my old posts about situations just like this (and yes, I go back and read my old posts :)…) it helped me remember that no matter what I’M THERE.  I’m working my ass off to make myself better – just like every single one of those ‘in shape’ people around me.  It doesn’t matter how much I can lift, it matters that I’m lifting.  That’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes but, once you do, it makes things a HELL of a lot easier.

So Monday I’ve got Chest/ Arms… and I’ll probably still be a little “Ahhhhhhmrmphhrmphgrrarrgghhh…” about it.  But you know what?  It’s all about framing it the right way in your mind.  So I’m just gonna go in there and own it, because I know I’m there for the exact same reasons EVERYONE in the gym is there – to make themselves look and feel AWESOME.

Monday is also the ‘official’ start for me for Project Transformation – I kinda started last Wednesday, but I had to get some things aligned with diet, training, supplements, etc… so when you read this, know that I’m probably enjoying my 1/2 cup of Oats, half of a sweet potato or my post-workout banana… and I’ll have more to come about THAT stuff in a future post I can promise you that.

In the meantime, have a great week!  Oh, and if you’re doing the Blubber To Runner Beat The Winter Blues Virtual 10K – let me know how you’re doing!!!