Cliche Explanation of Inspiration

I suppose I’m far enough along in the entries of my blog that I am supposed to explain why I decided to make the switch from all of my other athletics to running. I suppose it seems a little cliché to write this (it does feel the most Doogie Howser of all my posts thus far), but for some reason I want to write it, perhaps so that I can re-inspire myself.

During the fall-winter of 2009 I put on weight, a lot more than my usual winter padding. Perhaps it was stress, perhaps it was because I quit rugby to focus more on grad school, perhaps it was because my son was on solid foods and I ate off his plate. Irregardless, I put on more than usual and was up to 265, and was severely lacking in the muscle mass department. So in February of 2010 I got back into the gym, and this time I spent more time running than on the free weights, I had decided that the higher priority was to lose weight first then worry about lifting cars off the ground. After getting up to 1.5 miles at a time I started developing serious shin splints. So I decided, “since I am serious about this losing weight thing, I ought to spend more than $30 on a pair of workout shoes.” So I went to my local shoe store (Bob Ronker’s Running Spot) and bought a nice pair of Nikes. There they assessed my old shoe and informed me that I was sub-pronating.

Being a fan of research (I know; I’m weird. Did I mention that I teach history?) I started looking into running form. I requested a running DVD from the library and accidentally got the book “Born to Run” by Chris McDougall. The day before I was about to return it, I caught an interview of McDougall on the Colbert Report (yes, I know it’s not actual news) and decided it might be worth a skim. Once I started the book, I found myself enthralled. Not only did I find the content interesting, but I found the style of writing to be gripping (which is actually most people’s complaint about the book, I loved how he practically wrote his passion into his work especially how passionately he researched the topics and included the “dry stuff” [again: I’m weird about research]) and despite his romanticizing of the Tarahumara people I loved this invigorated approach to his falling in love with a topic (I wish my students wrote with such enthusiasm). The book spoke to me, and it said “Go Run.” His passion sparked my passion, I hadn’t fallen for a non-fiction work since I was 19. I was outright into “running,” not necessarily barefoot (yet, that’s a lot of weight on your feet when you weigh as much as me), but I wanted to run, and I wanted to run an Ultra then and there. But knew that I would have to work up to it. I quickly lost 35 pounds. I was running 4 to 6 nights a week, increasing my distance each time. But I wasn’t exactly improving my form, just running harder, running the way I was taught during football. After creating a PR of 26min flat in a 5k (best in my weight class, by the way) I felt amazing, and was ready to sign up for 10k. Within a week, during a 4.5 mile run, I would start to feel the effects of PF. After that I started to take time off of running, and vowed that when I started again I would do it right. Over time I began to get the other message of the book: running form. Since then I’ve devoted a lot of time to working on form and even worked out a sechedule to start back up in a slow, gradual process (I think that my eagerness to rack on mile is what over did it). So, slowly but surely this heavy weight runner will run right.