About

My name is Chris.

This is another attempt at writing this About Page. I have tried several times and each one a failure. I either get interrupted and the program deletes it, or I am unable to finish my thoughts and the program deletes it before I come back to finish. I save it but, alas, none of the first About Pages lived to see the light of an Internet day.
(If they did, they ran away and I am not one to force anyone to stay where they are unhappy. If anyone has adopted them, please take good care of them they are little but have a lot of potential.)

I am a marathon runner since 2006. Endurance has always been my forte but I never got into sports because I had a negative view of ‘jocks’ in high school. That perspective continued in college and was reinforced by a lot of the people I met during that time. I did play racquetball with my partner in crime, Sir Complains-A-Lot-While-Running but when he moved to attend dental school, exercise disappeared. We played softball a few years after he returned but we found that it takes a lot of people and commitment to play softball once a week (who knew?). After we stopped playing because the whole team basically quit, I got it into my head that team sports take too much time and effort from too many people to be able to rely on for fitness.

I started running. It felt good so I decided that I wanted to do marathons. Not just any marathons… Boston. I wanted to qualify. I started researching running and I dug out my books on nutrition so I could do this right. I started training in ernest in June 2005 for a January 2006 marathon. I was doing fairly well and I was even getting up at 4-5 each morning to run before work. My diet did not change much because I rationalized that I was burning off more calories so I should eat more, right? I did not lose much weight as a result. I read the book, Marathon, by Jeff Galloway and was hooked. His method involves walking early in the race to conserve your energy early by walking. Generally through water stations since they are at regular intervals. The problem is, because I was in such poor shape and I was still putting garbage into my body, all this did was give me permission to walk. I ended up with no motivation to run continuously for the final leg of the race. I needed to change my attitude and my paradigm for running. I knew all this at the time but I was not in a place for that kind of change.

I started this blog in 2010 with the intent of chronicling my way through the P90X fitness program. The plan was derailed by my then 6 month old daughter, Her Majesty. My wife, Littl Bit, was also still recovering from having our second child so I was even more busy. Add to the mix our 2.5 year old son (Little Dictator Manipulator) and ‘my’ time was always ‘their’ time. Her Majesty did not sleep more than 4 hours in a row after 6 months like her brother did. My son would often get up shortly after I got her to fall asleep. Neither of these was very conducive to my sanity functioning efficiently and although I tried many times to sell one or both on the Internet, my wife constantly reminded me that we would get caught and go to jail pawn them off on their grandparents, I would miss them and just deal with the lack ofsanity sleep. She did not sleep 4 hours in a row until about 18 months and that was only about 3 days a week. Not until summer 2012 did she finally decide I had enough and she slept through the night most nights.

Two years later… October 2012
I am overweight by 30 pounds. I have not worked out since the first year my son was born. I tried some working out last year because I was running in PF Chang’s Marathon with my friend Louis. That was a disaster for me. We finished in 6.5 hours (walking the whole thing would have been faster). Our longest marathon by a wide margin. Before my son was born we had run marathons for a couple years and we were finally getting into decent shape. My personal best was 4:25 although I lost 30 minutes because I was walked to talk with a man who runs a trail ultramarathon in Utah. I ran a couple more races after that but no workout time means fitness went in the toilet.

I spent those three years raising my beautiful children and I am happy for it. I think they are too.

Now…January 2013
I have lost 20 pounds. I meditate regularly. I have changed to a plant-strong (vegan plus eliminating almost all processed food) diet. I ran a half-marathon without walking at all. I have changed my mentality and my diet and I give my little ones a shot of whiskey every night before putting them to bed. I am now aiming for qualifying for Boston next year, my first Ironman in the fall of 2014, and Ultraman in Hawaii is the next goal after that.

I love my life. I love my family. I love my friends. I love.

This page is dedicated to change, the only constant there is in our physical reality.

Life is good. Come and share my journey. The more the merrier.