Gotta Be Above It

*blows the dust off this thing*

*coughs*

It's been too long.

I was once very religious about this blog. I was a machine. I had no problem coming on here and spilling my soul into a blog post. Like some things tend to do, though, the passion waned and flickered. And then... silence.

Darkness. My voice and space in the blogosphere vanished. Only shadows remained.

Recently, though, after a run with the Lopers, someone approached me. She said I looked familiar and relayed a story about how she ran into someone somewhere and started striking up a conversation. She mentioned her involvement with the Lopers and the other person said she followed a blogger who was with the Lopers. That blogger was/is me.

I felt bad. I felt like I let this random reader down and then felt like I let a lot of people down. But mostly I feel like I let myself down.

Blogging was fun. During tough runs or when I experienced something great while on a run, I couldn't wait to blog about it. I'd pay attention to the smallest details in order to relay it accurately to my readers. I was accountable to the readers. I was accountable to myself too.

Motivation and accountability are two enormous pieces of running puzzle. You can't train well if you don't have one or both of them.

So here I am, back at this blogging thing. That story jarred me enough to want to not only apologize to my readers but to also want to get back to writing about my running adventures. I do think that I have a great story, going from a sedentary 300-plus man to multi-marathoner. It wasn't easy and it is not easy to stay in this running game, but I know that if I can do it, anyone can. I firmly believe and will go to my grave believing that there is nothing special about me. I don't have any special abilities or talents. All I did was to kind of figure out almost by accident how to lose 100 pounds and how to run a marathon. I mean, I never intended to do either but I did. I changed my life and what a waste it would be to not share my story in order to let others know that they can too. Others who may not be at such a dire starting spot than me, and others who are where I was and feel lost and hopeless.

There is always hope. Nothing is impossible. Trust me. If there's anyone who can say trust me on that, it's me.

Anyway, I will be back on here more regularly. What does "regularly" mean? Heck, I'd take one day a week. Maybe twice if I'm feeling great. But I don't want to obligate myself to this. I want this to be fun and want this to be something I look forward to doing. If I feel like it's an obligation then I won't get back to it regularly or perhaps at all.

So for now, I want to catch you up very briefly. I didn't run during the summer but am back as a pace leader for the Loma Linda Lopers. I'm leading the 10-minute mile pace group once more. The last marathon I ran was the OC Marathon in May 2013. I signed up for the OC Marathon earlier this year but expereinced a first - my first injury that forced me to drop out of a race I'd paid for. It was in early April and I blew my calf out while refereeing a soccer game. I just turned to spring and BAM there went my marathon. It was tough. I ran a little in May but once school let out, I hardly ran.

I ran two half-marathons in 2014 - Citrus Heritage Half and Highland Half, both in January. OC Marathon was going to be a great race for me because... well, never mind that. That's in the past. Can't dwell on that.

I've gotten back to running long distances. On Sunday I ran 12 miles, my longest run since March. While training for OC I ran an 18 and 20 but it's been a while since I ran double-digit miles.

I've run double digits now for three consecutive weekends and plan on staying at that distance for the foreseeable future. My next race is in November (Mission Inn Half) and aside from that I am crushing midweek runs and my weekend runs. I do need to drop about 10 pounds (who doesn't?) before I can really say that I'm back, but if and when I do I think I could be in my best running shape. I'm feeling strong physically and mentally. My fire is back and the joy that I felt in running from 2009 to 2012-ish is back.

And I look forward to chronicling it here, mile by mile.