A Fat Kid Becomes An Ironman

My story goes something like this…

I lived the first 34 years of my life like any geek… mostly sitting around, playing video games, watching TV, working at a desk, staying up all night hacking on some cool piece of code that makes other computer geeks like me say “damn that’s cool”…

I am used to pushing myself to the limit… staying awake 72 hours in a row playing Doom till I vomit only to get right back in the chair to take on 12 more straight hours of demons. I took that same drive and determination to business and my career. I played hard… and when it came to work, it was all fun, so I worked hard too.

But honestly, I was never very physical. So, as you can imagine, I grew up to be… and I mean grew out to be… 5′4″ and 200lbs with probably 36% body fat. Then one day, I decided to get “fit”… maybe it was a body image thing, maybe it was the doctor who said to me rather dryly “just don’t get any more overweight”, but probably it was because of some advice I got that becoming more physically active would help balance my overactive imagination and drive to do more better faster in work and business.

It seemed like good advice, but it took me changing jobs to have enough of a break in the routine to start on this new endeavor. So when I left RealNetworks after 8 years to join Revenue Science, I took a short break, joined a 24 hour gym near my home, and started myself on a new diet and exercise regimen.

I basically lost weight the old fashioned way… fewer calories in… more calories out.

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So if you didn’t hear already, I got a calcaneus stress fracture while running the Seattle Marathon this past weekend. The thing about stress fractures is (or so I’ve been told) is that they don’t usually happen because of one specific event, unless you consider “training over a 6 week period” a single event. The problem this presents (at least for me) is that I can’t seem to tell how much training is too much training… until >>POW<< mile 23 of a marathon I have a stress fracture.