Updates from last year, why I run, and the one and only rant you should ever hear from me online

I freely admit that I have neglected this blog over the last year, no excuses but here we go again. Last time I posted I had just completed a year of bike commuting. A few things happened early in the year that changed the way Lynn and I go about our daily lives and I’ll get to that first.

Road racing

How the heck did this happen? So Lynn and I were working out for health mostly. One evening I came across the site for the Alaska International Senior Games and thought, “ok, this could be interesting”, I personally find it easier to do things like workout if I have a definite goal beyond “getting into shape”, whatever that means. The games are held in Fairbanks in August, Lynn likes to swim and at the time I was doing some running so we decided to give it a try. Lynn signed up for several swimming events and I signed up for the  5K and 10K runs as well as a sprint triathlon which I had to  drop out of due to some logistics issues. I looked at the results from previous years and found that doing well in this group was going to take some effort, having never raced any distance before, I had to check with some experienced runners to see what a good 5K time or 10K time was, really I had no idea. You can visit the site yourself but long story short, there are plenty of 50+ runners that can leave many high school cross-country runners behind. I really had no idea how to train for such a thing so I just continued with my normal running routine. All that would change in a couple of months.

How Strava and Team RWB got me organized and totally changed my focus

I use a social media site called Strava to upload my workout results and generally function as an online training log, at least that was the original use. For the uninitiated, Strava could be loosely described as “Facebook for athletes”, not really, but it does describe some of its functions. One of the features they released was virtual “clubs” whereby you join a club or clubs and you get to see the posts of other members, most of which you have never and likely will never meet in person. Sounds strange, but if you get to see someone in say, Paris, France who runs or bikes or swims frequently and takes the time to comment on your workout it has the strange effect of making you get out and do your workout even when you really feel like sleeping in or making excuses. Kind of like having someone locally to workout with that helps keep you motivated except that living out here in the bush there really isn’t such a thing as a running club to do the same thing. Most of the members post some kind of profile picture and I noticed one of them had a shirt with an eagle on it with the initials RWB and listed their club as Team RWB. Never heard of it before so I did googled it and found out that Team RWB was indeed a national organization, I encourage everyone to check out their site at https://www.teamrwb.org .

So what happened?

After competing at the Senior Games I ran my first Half Marathon and did surprising well as far as I was concerned. I got the bug and signed up for a full Marathon which I ran this February in Fort Smith. I didn’t do as well as I wanted to but I finished in a respectable time anyway.  Along the way I got a lot of encouragement from fellow Team RWB members, tips on training and so forth. Next up are at least two marathons in my calendar for 2019. I am planning on doing the Edinburgh Marathon and a few weeks later the Mayors day Marathon in Anchorage.

So here comes the rant

In the course of all this running and training Lynn and I got serious about what we were eating as well as the exercise component. Without going into extreme details we have each lost over 80 pounds and have kept the weight off for over a year and a half. During this process I was approached by several people who wanted to know one of two things. Was I sick and dying of cancer? This rumor actually circulated pretty far around Galena for a time even though everyone in town could see me riding a bike daily and running nearly every day. The other thing was “What are you taking to lose weight?”. Our society has gotten to the point, maybe its been there for a long time, that we cannot accept that the way to get healthy is simply to exercise and eat real food in moderation. Most of these people expect to live like they normally do, sitting on the couch watching TV, eating junk food to excess yet taking some magic pill or potion that is going to transform their lives. One person got angry with me because I wouldn’t reveal to him the drug or whatever I was taking that caused me to lose weight and gain energy. Well, here is the drug… eat real food, not packaged junk, stop drinking soft drinks, match your food intake to what you burn and get some sleep. You don’t have to train for marathons or triathlons but you do need to get out and move under your own power on a regular basis.  I have explained this multiple time and have been told it isn’t sustainable. Right, coming up on two years and I haven’t had a soft drink during that time. I think this has become habit. Sure I will occasionally eat at a restaurant in town but I don’t make it a habit. If Lynn and I can do this living in the Alaska bush I think anyone can.

New promise and direction for this blog

I started this blog some time ago because people wanted to see some pictures of Alaska and find out how we were doing. I think I have hit the saturation point for pictures of moose in the snow although if you want more I can certainly oblige. From this point on I plan to post weekly whatever boring mundane things Lynn and I have been doing with our lives. I’ll try to keep it interesting and maybe show how we do some of the things we do out here and  maybe talk about how our training is going. If that interests you, great, think of it as my weekly diary. My promise is that I will post something every week, my long runs are usually on Sunday so I’ll probably post something that day.

Thats about all I have for today. I’ll send out the  next post this time next week.