Hello new friends!

That’s another reason iRun. I make the best friends while running! 2 other contestants in this contest are friends I’ve met through running, and writing about running. Tamara and Martin are cool Calgary runners and bloggers!

This is so weird, as a blogger already, where to start on this blogging contest? First of all, thanks to iRun.com for putting on the contest. I would love a low paying writing gig at the end of all this, but from what I have seen so far from the other participants, I will be happy just getting to know them and learning from them. 

So…

Full disclosure. I am an amateur in everything I do. The least of not which is running. I love everything that comes with running and am happily behind the middle of the pack these days, but hoping and working to get back to ahead of the middle of the pack.

 3 years ago A long time ago I was 300+ pounds. Then with the help of a diet plan that will remain nameless Jenny Craig,  I dropped down to 225 in 5 months and ran a 1:58:30 half marathon. That’s in front of the middle of the pack, isn’t it? Ok, we’ll call it middle. (oh, in case you are wondering, I am 6’2” tall).

I started losing weight the previous November, then ran my first steps in December. It was quite possibly the hardest and most soul crushing experience of my life. Most of us have been there right? The first few runs? Terrible? I know some folks have been running since birth, but the majority of us can remember the first few steps like it was yesterday. So hard wasn’t it? Did you think runners were nuts? Did that first week change that opinion of other runners? not for me.

Well. now. I have a confession. I have an ego. A big one. Over the course of 15 years of happy (with normal marriage tough stuff) marriage, our struggles to have a baby, the miracle birth of my son 5 years ago, the loss of a company and a house last year and the challenges all of that presented, I still seem to have an ego. Maybe now though it has repurposed itself into something else. Instead of an ego, and needing to prove what I can do, maybe, just maybe it’s changed. I think it’s pride now. Pride in what I can achieve on my own 2 feet. I’ll talk more about how my ego turned to pride in later posts.

When I started I was an self professed overachiever. I had lost all the weight, ran a sub 1hr 10k in my first ever race, a 27 minute 5k in the next and a 1:58 half a month later. I told everyone about it. Didn’t you? What I didn’t tell anyone, ever, was the fact that I was so injured and destroyed by this thing I was using to stroke my ego, that I almost quit running altogether after the Calgary half that year. I’m still not sure many know that. I stopped running for a while under the guise of “I am recovering from my half”… heh, yeah. For 2 months…

My injury was in my feet. I had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. So bad that for the month prior to the race and the month after, I was resigned to waking up in the morning not wanting to take the first few steps out of bed. It was agony, for anyone who has dealt, I feel for you.

I had quit the diet plan a couple months earlier and wasn’t running anymore. I started to feel pretty bad about the whole situation. I resented not running and I resented running in general. I stewed and stewed about this without doing anything about it. I slowly quickly lost all the positive gains I made over the past 8 months.

I really was having mental issues over this bloody running habit. I hated it for lots of reasons, but knew there was something to it, something that maybe I hadn’t figured out yet.

Turned out my ego was the key for me getting back though (sort of sadly). I missed the rush of finishing a run or a race. Then telling everyone about it…

More in the next chapter…

For now, is there anything you’d like to know? I am at @Neil_Zee on twitter and have a Facebook Page for my barefoot running stuff… (we’ll get to that). Feel free to follow along here or there as I will post links all over the place back to here. Make sure to say hi if you do stop in for a visit.