About me:
I'm a 35 year old father and husband. Professionally, I am a software analyst and certified project management professional in the public sector. I like playing music [string bass and bass guitar] and occasionally play bluegrass with my father-in-law's band. I also like listening to music: 80s pop, electronic, ska, industrial, punk rock, celtic, and rockabilly. My wife and I also are huge addicts of the ABC series, Lost.
Athletically speaking, I am not a competitive person at all. I race, but I don't race to beat people, or even myself. I race to have a goal, a reason to keep running. I need every trick I can muster to fight off the irresistible urge to quit running, and racing is just one tool in my belt. So you wanna pass me, breeze on by. |
Why do I run:
Because I know that I paid good money for that race next month, and if I don't run, I'll be hating life when that starting gun goes off. |
Why I started running:
I started running when I was 6 or 7 because my evil stepfather was a runner. We all went to the track together, and I ran in a few 1 mile fun runs back then.
Then I quit until high school when I was on the track team, running the 1600. I'm naturally slow, but I was also smoking at the time, so I totally sucked. I practiced only when I had to, and my performance showed it. Frequently, the next race was setting up as I was halfway through my fourth lap.
Then I quit for a year or two until college when I was in the Navy ROTC. The Marines made us run. I hated it like a sickness because we had to run in the wee hours, and I was always hung over.
Then I quit for several years until I had to enlist in the Navy to pay for the NROTC scholarship I pissed away. The Navy made me run but only half as far as the Marines did. I joke that while in the Navy I ran 3 miles per year because we had to take our physical fitness test twice a year and it included a 1.5 mile run.
After getting out of the Navy, I quit again until I started getting fat. Apparently some metabolic switch tripped after I turned 25 or so. Over the next several years, I tried to form a running habit [how else to describe it?] But my motivation would always peter out before long.
Most recently, I noticed I was getting way too thick around the middle and woefully out of shape. I also noticed the runners I saw: there are few fat runners. My current bout of running started in July 2006, using coolrunning.com's Couch-to-5K plan. |