Me? Inspiring?

I wanted to start writing for a number of reasons: to keep track of my own progress, to help motivate others, to answer questions that other people might have and not know where to find the answers. There are a lot of overweight people out there just like me, and a lot of them have yet to take that first step. Maybe you hate running. Maybe you THINK you hate running and don't know where to start to give it a shot? Maybe you're just looking for some motivation and/or inspiration? I guess I just wanted to write out answers to questions that I had (and still have!) and couldn't find or had a hard time searching for.

So here's a little background. I'm 30 years old. I've been overweight pretty much my entire life. Lots of start and fail efforts. And while my nutrition is pretty much in check, once I stopped working at a job where I was on my feet all the time, the numbers on the scale just crept up higher and higher. I'd lose some weight, I'd gain it back, and so the cycle went on. January, 2009 was when I decided that it was going to be MY year! I started a food diary, Rich (my b/f since 2002 - for anyone who doesn't know me personally) had been certified as a personal trainer and had me working out at night. I was going to the track in the morning with my sister. I was starting to see some real results - and I was so proud of myself! I was down about 35 pounds in just under 5 months when my next hurdle came. I fell down the spiral staircase leaving work and my ankle and leg suffered. I was out of work for a couple months, but the workers comp battle went on FOREVER! Back and forth to appointments, independent opinions, physical therapy, blah blah blah. The good news came when I was FINALLY granted the leg surgery I needed in January, 2011. I was laid up for 2 weeks, but it was a success (yay!). Technically I'm not cleared to run until after my 6 month follow-up appointment next month, but one of my bucket list items was getting a 5k in before I turned 30 (April 24th). More about that in my next post!

That's the jist of my road up to the first 5k though. Knock on wood there'll be no more injuries and only more positive things to post about! To date I've done 3 5k's - not the greatest results, but I crossed 3 finish lines! I'll write about each of the 3 separately, and anything else that seems to fit or that I think will help.

One more thing... I'm long-winded. My posts will tend to be longer than most people would probably care to read, but I hope you'll find them worth reading anyway!