As many of us gather today to spend time with our families, I just wanted to take a quick moment to reflect on what I’m thankful for this year.

• My family – First and foremost, the most important thing in my life. I’ve got an amazing wife who manages to keep our crazy household in order day in and day out – and not only does she put up with my running habit, she’s started to develop one of her own! To top all that off, we have 2 beautiful, healthy kids that fill every day with smiles and laughter.
• My health – It’s coming up on 2 years since I started this journey towards a healthier life. I’m going to be turning 30 soon, and I’m by far the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. I have very little back pain anymore, I have the energy to run around and play with my kids for hours on end, and I even run for fun. These are things that would have seemed foreign to the me of 2+ years ago. I never would have even considered running a marathon back then, it just wasn’t in the realm of possibilities for me at the time. It’s amazing how quickly those things can change
• My ability to run – Sometimes I’m guilty of getting too caught up in the “minutae” of running, that I forget to enjoy and appreciate the simple act of running itself. Am I keeping a fast enough pace on this run? Will I set a new PR at my next race? How many miles have I logged this week? I need to learn not to take myself so seriously all of the time, and appreciate running just for running’s sake. I’m lucky enough to be able to run. Not everyone has that luxury, and I should never take it for granted.
• My readers – Yes, YOU! And I’m not just trying to suck up either. From the people that read my blog, to those of you that I interact with on Twitter and dailymile, each and every one of you motivates and inspires me to keep moving along on this journey, and to keep pushing every day to be the very best version of me that I can be.

Wherever you are and however you’re spending this holiday, I hope that you take at least a moment to reflect on what you’re thankful for.

For all of you in the U.S., I wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving. And to any of you from outside the U.S., happy Thursday

The Marine Corps Marathon is right around the corner (just 22 days, to be exact!), and my fundraising efforts for TAPS have been going really well. So far I’ve managed to raise $1200, exceeding my original goal of $1000! I’ve received lots of donations from friends and family too, but I just wanted to take a moment to thank my dear readers who have been kind enough to send in donations:

• Erin (@ewies84)
• Jeremy (@stellarpath)
• Mac (@fitmacdaddy)
• Ryan (@nomorebacon)
• Steve (@RunonAwesome)
• Ted (@AirForceTed)
• Tim (@TheBeerRunner)

The power of the social web (my blog, Twitter, dailymile, etc.) continues to blow me away. The fact that any one of these people were kind enough to donate, let alone the fact that I’ve only ever actually met 2 of them in real life, amazes and humbles me. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank each and every one of you for helping me raise money for such a great cause. On October 30, I’m going to be putting everything that I have into running the Marine Corps Marathon with my father-in-law’s photo on my back. I hope to do him (and all of you) proud.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also throw out a big thank you to Sam, who is organizing a 6 hour timed race on the same day as the Marine Corps Marathon in memory of my father-in-law, with the proceeds being split by TAPS and Train 4 Autism.

It’s not too late to donate! If you’d still like to help me raise money for a wonderful organization that provides support to the families of our fallen soldiers, just click this way…

One last time, with feeling – THANK YOU!

Some of you may remember that many moons ago, I wrote a WordPress plugin for displaying your DailyBurn stats in a sidebar widget. Well, there was a pesky bug that was causing some users to erroneously get a “HTTP Basic: Access denied” error message. I had never been able to recreate the issue on my own server, so I’d like to give a big shout out to Russell for helping me get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. It ended up being something pretty subtle, but it was enough to cause the plugin to not work at all for some users.

Anyways, the plugin has been updated, so if you’re already got it installed, you should be able to just automatically update it from your WordPress admin, or you can download WP-DailyBurn here.

I’ve always been a bit of a photo bug, and enjoy taking my camera along with me on runs. So I decided to start a photoblog to share some of the beautiful scenery that surrounds me running here in Alaska. I backfilled with some photos from the last month or so. It might be a little slow going these next couple of weeks while I’m still getting back into regular running, but then I plan to be posting there fairly regularly.

If nothing else, I’m hoping it will encourage me to take my camera along more often on runs, and take the time to stop and appreciate the beauty of the world around me.

I’ve added a link to my photoblog in the top menu, or you can check it out here if you’re interested:

Shot on the Run

Now, I wouldn’t normally post this in a look what I can do sort of way, but I thought it was too cute not to share. A few days ago, on somewhat of a whim, I decided to try doing clapping pushups, just to see if I could. My 3 year old thought it was quite hilarious, and kept asking me to do more. He even joined in with his own version, which is when I told my wife to hurry up and grab the video camera:

That’s right…today I turn 29 – just one more year to 30! My 28th year was by far my best year yet, and this one is already shaping up to be even better. This time last year, I had only recently started on my weight loss journey, weighing in at 262 pounds on my 28th birthday. This morning I weighed in right at 203, for a total loss 87 pounds so far!

On my 28th birthday, I wrote about giving myself the gift of good health, and so far I’d say it’s been a raging success! I’m healthier and happier (by far) than I’ve ever been before, and I’m doing things that I never would have thought possible just 1 year ago.

But you know what they say…talk is cheap, and a picture is worth a thousand words. So for a good visual comparison, here’s a photo of me just a few days before my birthday last year:

Now compare that with this photo taken the day before Christmas, 11 months later:

This year has been off to a somewhat slow start because my ITBS injury has kept me from running. In fact, my last “real” run was on December 26th for the Operation Jack satellite marathon. But I’ve been feeling really good the last few days, so I feel pretty confident that I’m nearly back to normal running. I’m still going to be cautiously optimistic, and take things slowly, because I definitely don’t want to drag this out any longer than necessary.

Even for how great my 28th year was, I’m determined to make my 29th even better, so that next year I can start my 30′s ready to rock! I’m ready to take on some exciting new challenges this year, and will do my best to keep pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone.

Today in the U.S. it’s Thanksgiving, a day where we’re meant to give thanks for what we have, and is traditionally celebrated by gathering with family, watching football, and stuffing our gobs full of turkey, candied yams, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie.

In tune with my new healthy lifestyle, I’m going to be doing my best to not stuff my gob today, but I would like to take a moment to give thanks for all the wonderful people and things in my life:

• My family. I have a wonderful, lovely, supportive wife who is the mother of my 2 children, my best friend, and my partner in crime. I couldn’t be more lucky. And we have 2 amazing kids that make me laugh and bring me joy every single day.
• My body. Despite years of misuse and abuse, my body is stronger than I could have ever imagined, and has yet to give up on me. I’ve asked a lot of it over the past 11 months, and it keeps coming back for more. And in just over 1 week, it will carry me 26.2 miles through my first marathon, less than a year from when I used to weigh 290 pounds and any sort of regular exercise wasn’t even a fleeting thought in my head.
• My job. It may not be the most glamorous job, or what someone might describe as their “dream” job, but it’s a good job that I (mostly) enjoy, and it pays well enough for my wife to be able to stay home with our kids, which is something that’s very important to us. I also get a lot of vacation time, which gives me even more time to spend with my family. These days (sadly), it seems like a good job with good benefits is becoming increasingly rare.
• You. Yes, I am thankful for each and every one of you reading this right now. Whether you leave comments or not, I know you’re there, and you help keep me on track. I’ve written it many times before, but I truly believe that I wouldn’t have been as successful as I have been so far if it weren’t for all you wonderful folks. Being accountable to more than just myself has been a huge incentive for me. This is an amazing community to belong to. It’s a place to share our ups and down, our successes and our failures, our accomplishments and our struggles. Thanks for allowing me to be a part of it with you.

Here’s wishing everyone out there a happy Thanksgiving. And if you’re outside of the U.S., or just don’t celebrate Thanksgiving for whatever reason… well, have a happy Thursday!

For the past 2 weeks, you could say that I’ve been in a bit of a funk. You may have noticed a lack of posts around here lately

I guess it really all started last month, when I opened my big mouth and wrote about how I couldn’t remember the last time my back really hurt. Well, apparently I was getting a little too cocky about the whole thing, or maybe it was some sort of cosmic sense of irony, but whatever it was, I hurt my back again 2 weeks ago. Now, aside from being painful of course, it was also disappointing. I had really thought that I was past that, that by losing more than 90 pounds in the past 11 months, I had all but eliminated my back pain. I guess this falls into the “all but” category.

Luckily, I didn’t hurt my back as badly as I have in the past, where I’m stuck in bed for 2 or 3 days, barely able to move. But it was enough to make me walk around pretty gingerly for several days, and even now, it’s still not quite back to normal. Not so much painful anymore, mostly just stiff.

I hurt my back on a Thursday, and I was scheduled to do the last of my 2 20-mile runs for my marathon training on that Saturday. When I woke up that morning, my back didn’t hurt so much, but was still pretty darn stiff. Being the stubborn person that I am, I decided to give my run a try, telling myself that if my back started to bother me, I’d immediately stop. Somewhat surprisingly, my back really didn’t give me too much trouble, though I wasn’t able to keep as good of a pace as I’d like. I kept an average pace of 10:35 min/mile, compared to the 9:29 pace I averaged on my first 20-miler 2 weeks prior.

It wasn’t a horrible run by any means, but not a great one either. And not exactly the confidence-builder I could have used 3 weeks before my first marathon (now just a week and a half away!). So this is when the self doubt started, questioning whether I’ve trained hard enough, whether I was crazy to think I was ready to run a marathon. Will I even be able to finish 26.2 miles? And even if I do, will I collapse into a lifeless blob as soon as I cross the finish line?

I know a lot of this is just nerves and the onset of the dreaded taper screwing with my head, but it certainly hasn’t helped my mental state lately. And just as I was kind of starting to get past this funk, a new one set in over the weekend in the form of a really bad head cold, that I’m still fighting with this morning. Here’s hoping that being sick now means that I’ll be in perfect health for my marathon next weekend

Surprisingly, all of this recent funktitude hasn’t led me to stuffing my face. Instead, my eating has actually been quite good as of late, and my official Physics Diet weight still has me in Onederland! Veg month is over, and much to Rita’s dismay, I’m back to eating meat. My experiment with going vegetarian wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, but I can honestly say that I feel better with meat in my diet than without. Maybe it’s the extra protein, I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that I feel so much fuller with a little meat in my belly. I can have 2 hardboiled eggs and 2 sausages for breakfast and be good until lunch, but if I have something like oatmeal and fruit, I feel hungry again just a few hours later. Introducing grains back into my diet also made me quite – ahem – gassy, so I’m sure my wife will appreciate that going away

When I started this experiment, I said that it was all about finding what works best for my body, what helps the most with my running, what helps me to be the best version of me possible. And, at least for me, that means a more primal approach to eating.

During veg month, I read The Paleo Diet for Athletes, which details how to adapt a paleo/primal diet to a more athletic lifestyle, since a strict paleo diet is pretty low in carbs. I’m still working on writing up my review of the book, but I’ll just say that there is a ton of great information in there. If you are currently following (or even considering) a primal/paleo diet, I would highly recommend this book. It’s written by Loren Cordain, who is also the author of The Paleo Diet, which is pretty much the book on paleo, so this information is coming from a good source.

Now, I certainly hope that I won’t have another 2 week stretch without a post anytime soon, but I won’t promise it either. If I have something to say, I write. If not, I don’t. Hopefully I’ll finish kicking this cold to the curb in the next day or two, and then I’ll be completely de-funkified!

Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you happen to click through and buy something, I get something like 3¢

I’ve talked about Operation Jack once or twice before on this blog, because I think what Sam is doing is really awesome. The love and dedication that he has for his son Jack is amazing, and I’m just immensely impressed with this guy’s running ability!

I had the great fortune to meet Sam and spend some time talking with him when he was in Anchorage for one of his many marathons in August (which was also when I ran my first 1/2 marathon).

Me with Sam from Operation Jack before the race.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me give you the highlights. Sam’s son Jack was diagnosed with autism shortly after turning 3. This year, Sam has committed himself to run at least one marathon every weekend – in fact, he’s going to be running 61 marathons in total this year. And he’s doing it all to raise money and awareness for autism.

I can’t even begin to imagine what Sam and his family go through on a daily basis. But I think what he is doing here is terrific, and I want to help support him anyway I can.

And that’s where you come in…

Operation Jack has a donation program they call Race 4 Free, where they will pay the race registration for anyone who helps them raise at least $300. My goal is to help them raise at least that much, though I’d really like to see it reach $1000, because it really is such a great cause. Mac from Get Fit Slowly recently blogged about setting up a donation team for the #mizboorun in Las Vegas, and I thought I’d join him!

So I’ve setup my own donation page here where people can donate money to Train 4 Autism. If all of you wonderful folks can help me raise at least $300 (and I know you can!) for Operation Jack, you’ll be helping me to support a great cause, and I’ll get to run the Las Vegas 1/2 Marathon for free!

Having met Sam, I can say without a doubt that he is a really cool, down-to-earth guy that really cares about his family. Operation Jack also has a special place in my heart, because my own son’s name is Jack I know that every single dollar donated will be greatly appreciated and put to good use.

Please, click here to make a donation to help Operation Jack and Train 4 Autism – every dollar helps!

I had one other thought on Vibram Five Fingers that I realized I forgot to include in yesterday’s post. Now, I don’t have any personal experience in this area, but it seems to me that they would be the perfect thing to wear for a triathlon. You could wear the same pair of “shoes” for all 3 events, with no need to change in between. Obviously, you would have to train qute a bit in them to be proficient in all 3 sports wearing VFF’s, but I think it could work out pretty well, and save you some transition time.

If I ever do a triathlon – and I think that I probably will – I’m pretty sure this is what I would do!

What do you think? Crazy idea, or pure genious? Has anyone tried this?