Since I’ve started writing again recently after a 7 year hiatus, and as my kids grow older and my own career and life goals evolve, I started reading my old blog posts. Looking for patterns to distill what this journey means to me. And it is a journey I am nowhere near complete with. I want my journey with running to continue for many years.
I started running in April of 2014 in Hawaii.
Twelve years is a long time to keep doing anything. It’s long enough to have the memories of where you started be foggy, a warmth of emotion without the precision of memory and long enough to realize that the person you’ve become is not necessarily the person you set out to be. It is a different person. Neither better nor worse, life simply evolves. And you evolve with it.
Looking back at posts from 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2025, and early 2026, starring at race medals and race bibs: they each had moments in time. I remember the police officer in Philadelphia running up a hill with me in the Philly Marathon, that FREEZING cold morning at my wife’s first marathon with me in Disney World in 2017, that first finish line in October of 2014 with my father prouder than anytime I ever saw him: his once morbidly obese son had overcome it all and run a marathon.
I remember my emotional Chicago marathon where I was back in that great city four years after I had last visited it, well over 100 lbs lighter, this time to run the Chicago Marathon.
And I remember a cruise ship in Hawaii. The cruise director telling me about the Ironman race and my secret, which I could tell nobody: I wanted THAT.
The various blog posts told me where I was physically and what was important to me then. And now I think I know what was really the most important the whole time.
This twelve years is my evolution (sorry for the missing 7 years 😂 of blog posts but life was still going on). The blog focuses on my physical health because my doctor who told me to write the blog years ago was focused on my physical health. But the blog is a snapshot of my life and those races.
My happy moments and my fears and my desire to tweak what health means – not just speed of running or the scale, but happiness in life. That’s what going through your 40’s to now nearly 54 does I guess. You reassess what matters.
2014 — The Spark: The earliest posts read like dispatches from someone who had just discovered fire. Everything was new. Everything was impossible. Everything was intended to be proof that I was no longer who I used to be. Back then, every mile felt like a statement I was making to every person who ever called me fat. Screw you – I’m not that guy anymore. Every race was a declaration. Every finish line was a rebirth. I had shed the image of the funny fat guy and became the marathon runner – something I never imagined.
My friends and acquaintances were awestruck. My parents were proud. My kids’ friends now could not call me fat (as I know a couple did). But could I hold it?
2016 — The Fight: By late 2016, the tone had sharpened. There was an intensity I see now. A sense of “I have to hold onto this or I’ll lose it.” These posts were full of numbers, weight, pace, fear, and determination. I was negotiating with my past self, still proving it was me in that body and that damn it, I deserved it.
2017 — The Identity Shift: By 2017, something changed. I wasn’t shocked to be running anymore. I was narrating a lifestyle and I was looking for something more. I wasn’t trying to become a runner. I was one. A couple dozen marathons will make that true even if you used to be 286 lbs. I stopped looking backward and was searching for the bigger dream.
2018 — This was the era where I wasn’t just running — I wanted a major new milestone: Ironman. That meant a 2.4 mile swim plus 112 mile bike ride and THEN a marathon. I was chasing something I never imagined. And then I did it.
2018-2025. Life got in the way of
Blogging. I finished my 50th marathon a few weeks before I turned 50 in 2022. And wonderfully, my wife became my marathon partner for more and more races. The pace was slower, but the love became of the sport became deeper, because someone so special was now doing it by my side (even if I didn’t say it to her enough).
October 2023 hit: My professional life collapsed. Coupled with some vicious lies, someone I once admired attempted to (unsuccessfully) pin blame on me for his own improper behavior. I was devesated. Still am actually. I had to fight for my profession reputation and still am. Had to tolerate improper retaliation, and still am. Then the worst thing, my father died Christmas Day of 2024 unexpectedly. Work’s misery greeted me everyday and coupled with that deep sadness was a stunning turn. The pounds started to creep back on. About 30 of them. I was mortified.
2025 — Demanding my life back.
Then comes 2025 — and I shifted again. Not backward. Not downward. Just determined to take back my story.
Life outside running comes into what I feel the desire to write about. Therapeutically but also to let my (few) readers know setbacks happen but they can persevere. We all must. Outside factors we never imagine – work stress and emotional fatigue can hurt. Grab hold to those around you and squeeze them tight (not too tight, it can hurt them!). They will be there running with you, sometimes walking by your side, but not letting go.
2026 — Integration
By early 2026, my voice is different from the one in 2014. It’s calmer. More grounded. More self‑aware.
And those 30 lbs … they have fallen off. The diet changed again. My emotional stability still feels trauma, but I have controlled it through ways I would have called weak not too long ago. I reclaimed my health from those who tormented me because it is the one thing I can control.
I am no longer performing, I am again living. My 4:18 marathon of a few days ago is not a comeback, a miracle, or a crisis. It was just a good day. But it was earned. A sign of health and stability in a life that has plenty of instability elsewhere.
What a dozen years of running through life has taught me is not something I set out to learn. My story didn’t end when I lost the weight. It didn’t end when I ran my first marathon. It didn’t end when I became an Ironman. It didn’t end when life got harder. It didn’t end when I slowed down. It didn’t end when I ran daily 10ks like I was walking up s flight of stairs. It has not ended just as my life had not ended. Rather, the story, like life, evolves.
Running didn’t save my life once. It saves it over and over again — in different ways, for totally different reasons. It is forever one step in front of the other. Perseverance above all else.
And maybe that’s the real finish line.
Morbidly Obese to MARATHON Runner 