Finding Motivation

Today was really hard for me to get motivated to work out. The wind was knocked out of my sails after going over our budget. It looks like I may not be able to do the half Ironman race in November. With a race fee of over $300 and travel expenses, it will be very expensive.

I'm the type of person that has to set a goal to work towards. I have a hard time training just for the sake of training. There are people that run on a regular basis that never put a race bib on in their life. That's not me. I like the challenge of having a set deadline for my training. There were times where I've had to modify my race schedule because of one reason or the other, but that deadline is always there. With the thought of not having the half Ironman this fall leaves me feeling a little lost in regards to my training. That leaves me with the only goal of cutting my 10k time down by two minutes.

It was hard for me to find the motivation to run today. Instead of going to the gym, all I wanted to do was go sit down at a restaurant and eat lunch. Even sitting outside the gym in my car, I was debating on whether or not to go in. I managed to turn my car off and walk in. I ran three miles on the treadmill, took a shower and left. Although it was tough to get motivated to work out, I'm glad that I did.

As hard as it was to find the motivation to work out, there are a couple of  factors that drove me to do it. The first was that I did not want my running to fall off. I'm also not 100% sure that I'm not running the half Ironman this fall. I would not want to start skipping workouts on the off chance that I am able to run that race. And lastly, I still plan on running the 10k. I definitely don't want to let that go.

Everyone has something that motivates them and moves them to do things. The goal of working towards a race is what works for me. For others it may be a weight loss goal or just the way one feels after a good run or work out. There are certain motivators that move all of us. These motivators help us accomplish small successes every day. 

Setting goals

Setting small goals along the way will help you achieve much larger goals. We all hear about the people that set out to lose 75 lbs - have never run a day in their lives - and sign up for a marathon that's six months away. I don't consider that the norm. I think it's absolutely incredible that these people can achieve these goals. For me, that seems unrealistic considering my wife and I both work full time.

When I first started running, I started adding mileage too soon. I started out the first week running one mile, then two the next, and three the next. I ran my first 5k three weeks after I had started running. I started to experience Achilles pain. I'd have to ice my legs down after runs. Then I set a goal of running a half marathon with the next couple months. As I pushed my mileage up, I started feeling different pains in my body. My knees were what were hurting me the most. Even buying new shoes didn't work. The day after I had my first 10 mile run, I could barely walk. Every time I would go up the stairs, it felt as if my knees were going to buckle. I had a piercing, needle-like feeling through my knees. I realized I was pushing myself too far too fast. 

I backed out of running that half marathon. I took a week or two off from running to give my body time to heal. When I got back in it, I ran three miles. That's it. The next day I felt great. I took the next three months and never ran more than three miles at a time, three or four times a week. That gave me a solid base to build on. When fall rolled around, I was ready to start training for my first half marathon. The training plan I used had me adding a mile to my long run every week. I finished my first half-marathon 1 minute and a half under my initial goal. 

My long term goal is to run an Ironman.  I hope to achieve this within the next two years. I have several smaller goals that I have set for myself to accomplish in the mean time. Racing in a half Ironman this fall is one of them. I also plan on running the Cooper River Bridge Run in the early spring next year. I ran that same race this year but had issue with the way runners were sorted into their starting corrals. When I signed up I put myself in the category of runners that would do the race in under an hour. The problem was that there were people signed up for the same category but a mile into the race, they were already walking. 

While I enjoyed running the race, I told myself that I would try to qualify to get seeded the next time I ran the race. For next year, I need to provide proof that I can run a 10k in under 50 minutes. I am almost there. I can pump out four to five miles at a pace of 8 min to 8:15 min per mile. There's a 10k in October that I plan on running in hopes of coming in under 50 minutes. 

Setting short term goals helps with the long term goals. Set a long term goal and short term goals that will help achieve it. I have to remind myself that I should not compare myself to those that went from couch potato to running ultra marathons in six months. It doesn't do me any good. Everyone's situation is unique and I'm doing the very best I can to achieve my dreams.  

How did I do it?

How did you do it? How did you lose all that weight? That's the question I get the most now days. I will say that it was not my choice. As I briefly described in my first post, I had some issues that arose. I believe that my body got to the point where it could not stand all the junk I was putting in it.

I wrestled with weight my whole life. I was always a big kid and had horrible eating habits. I weighed 100 pounds in the second grade. By the time I was in third grade I weighed 130. And 180 pounds in middle school. I could keep going but I think you get the picture. While growing up, I always thought I was just a big guy. I made excuses for myself. When I got into my teens, I tried to control my food intake. It would work to an extent but it never did the trick. I never lost as much weight as I would've liked. And when I did lose weight, I couldn't keep it off.

Then things got really unhealthy for me. In mid to late high school, I became bulimic. Yes, guys can be bulimic too and no, I have never admitted this to anyone other than my wife. Any time some one would ask me if I was making myself throw up, I would flat out deny it or make up some excuse as to why I threw up. The problem got much worse when I got to college. I would throw up just about every meal my freshman year. I came home that next summer looking sick. I knew I was doing a tremendous amount of damage to my body and I would try to stop but I felt like I couldn't. It was something that I struggled with for many years. To this day, If I eat too much I feel sick and those feelings come back.

I want to fast forward a couple years. It is 2012 and I'm on vacation with my wife and kids at Disney World. I remember I bought a new bathing suit that year and when I put it on to go swim with the kids, I looked horrible in it. It was extremely tight and I had the worst muffin top you'd ever seen on someone. I hated the way I looked in it. I wore it once and that was it for me. While on vacation, my oldest daughter gets the stomach bug. So, then I get it along with everyone else. I cut out all dairy while trying to recover and was feeling fine. When I reintroduced dairy, I got sick again. This cycle went on for a few weeks until we figured out that I was lactose intolerant. I did a little research and I found out that lactose intolerance usually comes on later on in life and can be caused by a sickness. Cutting out dairy doesn't mean cutting out just milk. It's cutting out butter, margarine and anything cooked in those things. A lot of beaded chicken has milk in it. And just about every piece of bread or bun served in a restaurant has milk in it. As you can see, my options were limited now. There was one bright side to this, I started to feel great for the first time in my life. I was roughly 260 pounds when I started my dairy free lifestyle. Every now and then I would try something with dairy in it to see how it affected me, and it would make me sick.

I lost about 40 pounds in the first few months of being dairy free, That's when I decided to kick it up a notch and start running. The weight kept coming off. At 220 lbs, I set a goal that I wanted to get down to 195 lbs. Even my wife thought that I might be too skinny at that point but I was going about it in a much healthier way now. Eventually, I made it all the way down to 180 lbs. That's where I stayed for about a year. I then ran across a book called Racing Weight By Matt Fitzgerald. I went on a website of his and calculated what my optimal weight for running races and triathlons would be. It calculated that I should weigh 164 lbs with 7% body fat. I thought that there would be no way that I can lose roughly another 20 lbs.

In January of this year, I joined in on a weight loss competition at work. Most people thought I was crazy, and looking back, I was. I was going up against guys in the 250 lbs - 300 + lbs range. The winner would be the one who lost the most weight by percentage of body weight. I figured I had a chance because I didn't have that much to lose. And the prize money was $1,000. Needless to say, I did not win. At the beginning of the contest I weighed 174 lbs. On the final day, I was down to 155 lbs. Way past what I was shooting for but I knew that I would probably gain some weight back.

During this weight loss competition, I had my annual physical. I told the doctor that I've had some G.I. problems in the past. He said he wanted to run some blood work to see if I had Celiac Disease. When the blood work came back, it indicated that I did have Celiac. Not only that, I was very deficient in Vitamin D, which is another indication. They sent me to a gastroenterologist and he said the same thing.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder where the small intestine cannot digest gluten properly. It is a genetic disease. This is not a fad or the latest diet. In Celiac patients, gluten breaks down the lining of the small intestine to the point where it cannot absorb nutrients from food. The only way to treat this is to maintain a gluten free diet. I almost didn't believe the doctors when they told me I had Celiac but once I went gluten free, I could tell a huge different. I started eating gluten again for a couple of weeks thinking that they were going to run a few more tests on me. I got even more sick when I started eating  diet with gluten in it. I felt so lethargic and sick that I could not wait to go back to being gluten free. Since going gluten free again, I have gained a few pounds back. That's actually normal in Celiac patients because the body is now absorbing all the nutrients properly. I now maintain my body weight in the 160 - 163 lb range.

My views of food have changed dramatically over the last few years. Yes, I could've taken a pill to aid with the digestion of lactose but I chose not to. I decided that that was going to be the moment that everything changed for me. I use food as a fuel for my body and nothing else.

Making Time

I'm back, everyone. I'm sorry for my long absence but I figured I should get back on the horse.

It's been quite a busy summer. Work has been ridiculously busy lately. My wife started a new job in the spring and her schedule has been completely packed. Throw four kids in the mix along with their activities, and you have one tired husband and father. Even with all the stuff we have been doing I wanted to post what I've been up to.

One of the purposes of this blog is to show people that, even though we all lead very busy lives, we can all achieve our goals. Everyone has something that they want to do. One of my goals in life is to complete an Ironman race. Last year I set the goal for myself that I would complete one by the time I turn 36 (I'll be 34 in about 2 weeks). I always hear people talking about how they don't time to work out or they're too busy. The reality is that there is always time. We have to make time for working out or doing whatever it is that we want to do. I realized that the other night when I said to myself that I haven't had time to write on this blog. That's not the truth. I had the time, I just decided to do something else with it. There were plenty of times where I just sat and watched tv or scrolled through Facebook for the hundredth time in one day. The thing is that I did not make this a priority.

Having four kids and a very busy schedule makes it hard for me to find time to work out. My wife is a nurse and works at a local hospital. I am a building inspector in a neighboring county, My kids are in 2nd grade, kindergarten, preschool and we have a toddler. On the days that my wife and I both work, every minute of the day feels like it's accounted for. If I'm idle at any point, I'm wasting time. My wife and I get up around 5:30am (I know, that's not super early for people that are training for a race but bear with me for now). We wrestle the kids out of bed and get them dressed. My wife heads off to work and I pile the kids in the car and we are off to the babysitter's house. I get the kids there by 7am, Then it's off to pick up my county vehicle. I try to start work between 7:30 and 8 and usually take a 30 minute lunch on those days, Like I said before, every minute counts. When I'm done working, it's a mad dash to get to my personal vehicle so I can get the kids. After that, we head home, cook dinner, and then I put the kids to bed. That's a condensed version, which doesn't include the days that my daughter has to be at cheer practice. Needless to say, we are a busy bunch.

No matter how busy we get, staying active is something that I feel like is very important to me. I need to make time for my workouts or my dream of being an Ironman may never come true. Some days I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to workouts. I used to spend a couple hours on Saturday or Sunday mornings on the saddle of my bike. With being out of town and crowded work schedules, this hasn't happened for me in the past few weeks. There are times when I supplement this with a stationary bike workout at the gym on my lunch hour. There have been plenty of times when I woke up extra early (sometimes like 3:45am) to go for a run. That gets difficult if my wife works several days in a row. Sleep comes at a premium then.

I do a good bit of my workouts at the gym. I try and schedule my long runs and bike rides for the weekend. I'm not crazy about having to train on a treadmill but sometimes it's all I have to work with. I can go to the gym, run, take a shower and go back to work. I actually did most of my training for two months leading up to one of my half marathons and set a new PR. So, it has worked out for me in the past. This upcoming weekend will be tough because my wife has to work all weekend long but I will figure something out.

We all have some sort of goal we want to work towards. For me it's a race, for others it may be a business venture that they've always wanted to start. We need to make time for these things in our life. We can start small, we don't need to go all out. I would love to be able to run 5 or six miles every time I run. My schedule doesn't allow me to do it... but it may allow me to run 3. And 3 is better than 0. That's the same reason why I haven't been posting to this blog, I felt like I needed some big, interesting story but I don't need that. I need to start small and let this blog grow into something bigger. We always feel like we need to go all out when we want to do something but, in the end, we do nothing. Setting small attainable goals will help us achieve our major goals in the future.

Rough Waters

I've been training for a triathlon for the past month or so. My main goal is complete a half iron distance triathlon by October of this year. For those of you who may not know, a half iron distance triathlon is composed of a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride and a 13.1 mile run. Since it's been almost two years since the last triathlon I've done, I decided that I needed to do at least one this summer to get back in the swing of things. I picked the Tri Latta sprint race. The sprint distance is the shortest type of tri. This race consisted of a 750 meter swim, 17 mile bike and 3.1 mile run. I was thinking this would be a piece of cake, I would soon find out that it would not be.

I prepared all my stuff the night before the race. I pumped the tires on my bike, oiled the chain, packed all my gear and practiced clicking in and out of my clipless pedals. This would be the second time using them out on the road.

I woke up at 3;45am. The race was held in Huntersville, about an hour away from where I live. I arrived around 5am. After getting my timing chip, body marked, and the necessary trip to the Port-A-Jon, I started setting up my stuff. I racked my bike, set out my shoes and all the gear I would need for the race.

When the time came near, I walked down to the lake. There were people warming up in the water but I decided not to. They soon called the first wave. As soon as the gun went off, I walked over to the waters edge, knowing I was in the next wave. The water was surprisingly warm, reports said it was 88 degrees. The countdown was on, I had five minutes until the gun went off.

There were thirty to forty people in my wave, the red swim cap wave. When the gun went off, it looked like a free for all. I saw nothing but arms, legs, and water splashing all around. As I got further out in the water, I felt less and less comfortable. This was my first official open water swim. I've always heard that swimming in open water is so different from swimming laps in a pool and I was quickly finding that out.

Not being able to see under water, my instinct was to keep my head above water. About a third of the way down one side of the buoy, I was already feeling very tired. I was trailing far behind and I soon realized I was the last red swim cap, everyone else was already making the turn to head back to shore. It was at about that time that I realized that the next wave was coming up behind me. I had a swarm of thirty to forty people swimming all around me. I started to panic. I had never felt like that in my life. The only thing I knew to do was to stop and tread water until I felt the anxiety pass. I thought about calling one of the lifeguards over but was a afraid of being disqualified from the race. It was at that time that a lifeguard on a kayak called out to me to try to make it to his boat. I managed to swim over there and grab on. He told me I could hang on and catch my breath for a minute. He then asked me if I wanted him to call the boat over to take me back. I thought about for a second but decided I was going to keep going. I thanked him and I started swimming again.

I made it to the halfway point but felt even more exhausted then I had before. I really didn't think I was going to make it. It was then when another lifeguard came over and told me to catch my breath while I hung onto her boat. She asked me if this was my first triathlon, I told her that that this was my first open water swim and that I can usually swim long stretches in the pool just fine. She then asked if I usually swim with my face in the water. I said "yes." She told me to swim like that. Even though it did not feel right, I need to swim with my face in the water because swimming with my head up and out of the water would wear me out much faster (I found that out pretty quickly). I told myself that I would give it one more try and if I felt like I couldn't make it, I would call the boat to get me out of the water. I thanked the lifeguard, put my face in the water and started swimming. I made it back to shore. Even getting caught up with another group of swimmers, I did not feel panicked. It took me 32 minutes to complete the 750 meter swim. That's more than twice as long as it takes me to swim the same distance in a pool. As exhausted as I was, I dragged myself out of the water and made my way to transition.

In transition, I drank a good bit of water and scarfed down a granola bar. I threw my bike shoes on and rolled my bike out of transition. I did not feel much better on the bike at first. My whole body was so exhausted from the swim that the first half of the bike ride felt very sluggish. The second half of the bike ride was when I was starting to feel better (maybe the granola bar started kicking in). I felt faster and stronger.

I made it back to transition in a little over an hour, which is about right for me. I usually ride at a 15 to 16 mph pace. I was excited to get my running shoes on and go. Running is my thing. As I got out on the trail, my calves felt like they were going to cramp up for the first quarter mile. As soon as that went away, I was able to pick up the pace. All of the people that passed me on the bike course, got passed on the run course. I did the 5k run in just over 29 minutes. I consider that pretty good considering how fatigued I was for the first part of the race.

My overall time for the race was 2:18:33 (including my transition time). As upset as I got at myself for having such a bad swim, I can say that I learned a lot. I learned that I need to trust my training. The first thing I did when I got out in the water was try something I had never done before. Race day is not the time to try something new. I'm glad I had the experience and that it happened in a sprint and not a longer race.

Where I Come From...

Let me introduce myself. My name is Anthony. I’m 34 years old. My wife’s name is Erin and we will celebrate our 10th anniversary on June 25. We have four beautiful children that keep us very busy. I was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Argentina. I lived there until the age of 13, when we moved down to Charlotte, NC.

From the time that I was a young child, I was always overweight. I ate nothing but cheeseburgers and junk food. Even when we went over to peoples houses, I would refuse to eat their food. I’d wait until we left and my parents would hit a drive-thru and buy me a burger. Even as a child in elementary school, my meal at a fast food burger place would consist of a cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, nuggets, fries and a coke. My excuse was that I could not decide what I wanted, so I would order all of it. By the time I was in second grade, I weighed 100 lbs. Fruits and vegetables never came anywhere near my plate when it came time to eat. By the eighth grade I was 180 lbs. Two years after I got married, my weight topped out at 272 lbs.

Being a big kid made it hard for me in school. I would get picked on by other kids all the time. The kids on my seventh grade soccer team picked on me so much that I dreaded going to practice. Much to my dad’s disappointment, I quit the team just a few weeks into the season. That was the last time I played any sort of organized sport.

Fast forward to March 2012. My wife and I were in Florida with our kids and my mother-in-law visiting Disney World. One of the kids caught the stomach bug. Needless to say, we all got sick that week. Remembering that dairy upsets the stomach even more when someone has the stomach bug, I cut it out for a couple days. Once I thought I was better, I’d reintroduce it into my diet but I got sick again. I tried several more times to reintroduce dairy into my diet and kept getting sick. Not even Lactaid pills were helping. So I cut out dairy from my diet completely.

At the time of our Disney trip, I weighed in at 260 lbs. I managed to drop about 30-40 lbs within the first six months of going dairy free. I thought that 220 lbs would be an ideal weight for me. Other than taking the dog out on one to two mile walks, I was not doing anything special. It was when I went to a kid’s birthday I got inspired to do something different, something I had never thought of doing. I was out in the front yard watching the kids play and I look in the garage and I see a picture frame of the birthday boy’s father and he was competing in a triathlon. I didn’t even know that normal everyday people competed in triathlons. When we got the kids loaded in the car and on our way, I look over at Erin and told her “I think I want to do a triathlon.” She said “That’s good. I think you can do it.”

At first, I did not want to tell anyone of my plans. I felt like I did not have one athletic bone in my body. The last time I tried to run, I couldn’t run longer than 60 seconds.  I felt like I could deal with the swim and the bike but the running is what scared me the most. I went out and became a member at the aquatic center. I didn’t have a bike so I started my bike training on the stationary bikes at the gym. The first time I went out for a run, I wanted to see if I could get down to the corner without stopping. And I did. Not only that. I didn’t stop there, I ran back home. I had just run a whole mile for the first time in my life. I was so excited! Three weeks later, I ran my first 5K race.

Since that first 5k, I have run many 5ks, one 10k, 3 half marathons and one triathlon. I won my age group in the last 5k I ran. Something I never thought I’d be able to do. My next race is Tri Latta. It’s a sprint triathlon (750 meter swim, 17 mile bike, 3.1 mile run). I’m currently training for  a half iron distance triathlon (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run). I have my eyes set on running the Beach to Battleship  race in October.

Since my weight loss journey started, I have gotten down to 158 lbs. I feel like this is where my body is most comfortable at. My pant size is down from a 42 to a 30. My cholesterol numbers have been almost cut in half. A few months back, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. I’m just now getting used to a gluten free diet along with being lactose intolerant. It makes it hard to eat out but I feel so good when my diet is right.

This blog is going to be a little bit of everything. Anything from training, training schedule, diet and family. I couldn’t do this without the support from my family. Blogging is a first for me but I look forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences with you.