I've always been into video games. As long as I can remember. I've also always had the most rampant sweet tooth of anyone I've ever met. I'm talking an entire box of oreos for lunch. Not with lunch. FOR lunch. And that's not even an exaggeration. I actually did that once. So I grew up on snacks and video games.
Well I was about half way through middle school, and I don't remember the context, but I was talking to my parents about something and I wasn't wearing a shirt because it was summer and I had probably just woken up an hour or two ago (so it was probably about 3pm). My dad told me to look down. He asked if I could see my feet. I could, but the point was to look down and see that I'd developed a bit of a gut. I was getting fat (it's only thanks to park and rec soccer and basketball that this was just happening now). This was the beginning of me as a fit and somewhat healthy person.
The rules were very simple at my house from this point forward. I would run 3 miles a week or there would be no video games. And so I started running a mile every other day on our treadmill. There's not much more to that part of the story.
High school came around and I started freshman year on the jv soccer team. I had a slightly less than mediocre season, and while I'd played soccer since I was very little, moving from state to state and being the shy kid that I was playing soccer in a small town where everyone kind of grew up playing together already, so while I should have been pretty decent, I didn't fit in too well and so I also didn't play too well. At the end of the season, my coach actually told me that there might be other sports out there I could try.
Then the winter sports season came. Naturally I did indoor track. Equally naturally I did the mile. And I was good at it for our team. By that I mean I ran about a 6 minute mile, which I thought was pretty good, not realizing that in high school track that's actually a really bad time, but we had no distance runners, so I was it.
Over the next 4 years, I would expand to the mile and two mile and fall of sophomore year I did Cross Country. Like my soccer coach had said, there might be other sports out there for me. After the first meet I had established myself as the second fastest runner on the team, second only to the senior captain (and, depending on the race, I was sometimes third, also).
I ran on my own. In and out of season. I ran in the sun, I ran in the rain, I ran in the snow. I ran in tornado warnings and blizzards. I ran at night. I ran on the road. I ran on the track. Running was my thing now. The furthest I ever ran was 16 miles. And to me that was an accomplishment.
I graduated high school as a member of 4 or 5 relay team school records. I was on the 4x400m relay team that was the first for my school to ever go to the State Open for indoor track (definitely not the first for outdoor track). And I was the captain of all 3 running sports.
The next goal was to run track in college. I went to Central Connecticut State University and ran with them for most of the year until I absolutely destroyed my knee during an hour and a half run on a golf course in the snow. Slipped and smashed it into some black ice. Couldn't run for almost 6 months. Without getting too deep into that, it resulted in me losing all motivation in school and failing out of college.
And here is where we come full circle. I joined the Navy after being kicked out of school for achieving a 0.2 GPA (that's 4 F's and a D-). I scored a 93 on the ASVAB and sold my soul for a $25,000 enlistment bonus to be in the nuclear field. I went to boot camp and started to fall out of shape with the Navy's poor physical fitness standards. Then I went to nuke school and for 2 years didn't have the time, energy or resources to stay in shape. I tried to start a workout routine over a dozen times, but nothing ever stuck.
So for 2 and a half years I did almost no physical activity. I was horribly depressed for a long time (only a few people know this) simply because of how I felt compared to how I used to feel. Anyone who's ever gone from awesome shape to out of shape knows what I'm talking about. And I don't mean the out of shape I used to talk about when I'd go a few months without running and then the season would start up and the first few weeks would be painful. There's a whole new level of out of shape that I shared with the lazy population of the world. I got fat. Literally. The more out of shape I got, the harder it was to really get back into it.
After finishing 2 and a half years of nuclear training, I checked into my first real command out of Bremerton Washington aboard the USS Kentucky. I've been here since June 6th, 2012. My dad started doing CrossFit a very long time ago. I was in high school, so I'm thinking it was somewhere around 2003 or 2004. Before it was super popular, before there were CrossFit gyms. Back when all of CrossFit was just a WOD posted on a website. So for a long time it had intrigued me, but I never had the resources to try it out. Until I got to Washington. I've been CrossFitting for almost 3 months now and I've been eating healthy as well, though that's still a work in progress. And in that 3 months I've made more progress than I would have thought possible in such a short amount of time.
This blog is here to document and discuss my training, my eating and my thoughts on all of it. I will post monthly progress pictures here as well (when I'm not at sea). Why? I'll go with the cliche answer and quote the Eminem song "Not Afraid"
"I guess I had to go to that place to get to this one. Now some of you might still be in that place just tryin to get out. Just follow me. I'll get ya there."
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