The Beginning

About five weeks ago, some friends and I were eating dinner at a bar downtown Ann Arbor.  $1 burgers and $3 drafts are hard to pass up after a rough day of work.  Conversation took it's usual course--the odd happenings of our respective jobs, obsessive quoting of 30 Rock, counting down to the weekend... the usual.  Then someone had to change the subject to something that would change my life, my beloved and cherished routine, for the next 16 weeks and most likely longer.  "We should run the Detroit half-marathon."  WHAT.

At this point I was walking the 2.5 miles to work each morning, and running home.  That is, whenever I could drag myself out of bed forty minutes earlier than I needed to if I were driving.  The running days were slowly becoming a thing of the past.  And this was nothing unusual for me.  I have a long history of saying I'm going to accomplish something, only to give up a week or two later and justify it by listing off a series of super-lame excuses.  "I'm going to write a book.  I'm going to learn how to play the guitar.  I'm going to run a marathon."

RECORD SCREECH.

That evening, while wolfing down my $1 burger, it all clicked.  I was finally going to run a marathon.  Now my friends... they, of course, know my history.  All three of them looked at me with that typical "whatever you say Bryce" look.  Not only was I committing myself to 13.1 miles--I was committing to twice that distance. 

I immediately began telling everyone I knew that I was going to complete this journey to running 26.2 miles on October 17, 2010 as a way of holding myself accountable.  Over the past five weeks of training, I must say that I am impressed with my discipline and commitment to following through with what I've said.

This blog is going to chronicle my quest for fitness.  I plan on including recipes, strategies, schedules, as well as my own internal thoughts and observations--never without my sarcasm, I'm sure.  I hope this makes for an interesting read, and maybe I can perhaps inspire someone else to do what I did and leave their life of greasy potato chips and sugar-saturated snacks behind them.  This isn't about just running a race, it's about choosing a healthy lifestyle.