Greetings and salutations!

So, I'm training for my first marathon.

This is a huge deal for me and is a personally significant undertaking for a lot of reasons (outlined on my other blog here). It's also a big deal simply considering that I currently weigh 212 pounds, it's been years since I participated in any kind of race (a 10k back in the late 90s), and I've never been much of an athlete.

So how did I get here?

(I swear I'll try to be brief...)

It started back in May of 2009 when I had a bit of a, well, breakdown over my weight. I'd reached 255 pounds, and after being obese my entire adult life I hit bottom in a store dressing room while trying on a little black dress. I decided that things really needed to change, and I started a complete lifestyle makeover. I joined Sparkpeople.com, changed my eating habits, and started exercising. My weight began dropping, I felt a ton better, and I hooked up with a great group of internet buddies who were on their own weight loss journeys.

A few months into it all, one of my online friends suggested that we pick a marathon and all meet up in person there, as most of us have never met in real life. The idea was that we find a race that had different distance options so everyone could participate to their own comfort level. After some research, I decided that although it sounded quite ridiculous, I could train enough to be prepared to walk a marathon given enough time. We had our sights tentatively set on a marathon seven months from that point, and given that the beginner marathon walking training plan I'd found only took six months I figured I was golden.

So I started training. Walking had been my main source of exercise to that point, anyway, and I really enjoyed it. But by the time I'd gotten about two months into the training schedule the plans to meet up at the marathon fell apart. Nobody else could travel that far on that particular weekend. I stopped training, and went back to just walking for fitness. But I couldn't shake the desire to do a marathon. So I then made plans with one of my sisters (who was preparing to deploy with the National Guard for a year and has done marathons before) to do one together when she got back. We tossed around some ideas for which marathon to do, but time got away from us and although I started training again, we eventually realized that neither of us was going to be ready in time.

But now she's back, and not only have we settled on the 2011 Chicago Marathon, we've actually registered and made travel plans. This time it's for real.

Since the beginning of my weight loss and fitness journey I've lost 55 pounds, gained 20 of it back (over that year when my sister was deployed and neither of us was conscientiously training, and I wasn't even really tracking my nutrition very closely), and have now lost 8 of those 20 I gained back. This time I have a gym membership, a personal trainer, my sister to do long walks with, and my girlfriend to train with at the gym. I've embarked twice now on a training schedule over the course of a year and nine months and made it a third to a half of the way through each time, so I've built up a decent amount of mileage. I know what I'm getting into, at least.

Yes, I'm overweight, not in amazing shape, and not a runner. Maybe someday I'll become a runner, but right now my 212-pound body has other things to say about that. But I love to walk. I love to walk as fast as I can for long periods of time. It's very... zen.

So between now and October 9th I have to lose as much weight as I reasonably can, gain enough speed to be able to make the distance in less than 6 hours, and build my endurance so that I can walk that long. Currently I'm doing weight training under the guidance of my trainer three to four days a week, occasionally taking yoga classes, and splitting my cardio time between the treadmill (interval training, tempo walks, and 1-2 hour walks on the weekends) and the elliptical machine (because it's fucking fun).

I want to document my training progress if for no other reason than having something to look back on at times when I'm feeling stuck or unmotivated. Some documentation of my mental state, physical condition, what's been difficult and how I've dealt with it, my cumulative mileage and weight loss, etc.

So welcome to what might be the most boring blog on the planet! Woohoo!