The continued evolution of mad.anthony

I make this post every year. It's completely self-serving, and a complete brag to make me feel better about myself. But if you can't make a blog post for no other reason than to boast, why have a blog at all?

Here's the deal - back in 2004, I had one of my parents take a picture of me standing in front of their fireplace while I was visiting them at Christmas. At the time, I was 24 years old, 5 foot 5 inches tall, and weighed about 250 pounds. A few months after that, I was killing some time on a message board and took a "how long will you live" online test. It said I would be dead by 55. For some reason, despite ignoring years of doctors, family, and strangers telling me I should lose weight, something about that clicked. I started watching what I ate, and I started exercising. And in about 2 years, I'd dropped about 100 pounds. In the time since then, a lot has changed - i finished an MBA program, bought a house, got a cat - but I still managed to stay at pretty much the same weight. And every year, I have the family take a picture of me at Christmastime, and I post the series here. And yes, it's a chance to pat myself on the back, but it's also a reminder that if I want to be able to post this again next year, I need to keep up the trips to the gym and cut back on eating entire cartons of ice cream.

In the last year and a half, I've also added some strength training to my workout, in the hopes that I'd develop giant pecs that would cause random women to seductively rub my arms and ask if I've been working out. Alas, that hasn't happened - maybe I'm not working hard enough, or long enough, or maybe I'm just genetically doomed. But I do aim to keep up at least some of what I've been doing - I notice a very slight improvement when I look in the mirror, and I also feel like it's a little easier to lift stuff.

I've also started doing some road races, starting with the 2010 Baltimore Half. I did a few more races this year - a 10 miler and a 10k in addition to the half, and I shaved 28 minutes off my time this year for the half this year, going from 3 hours 7 minutes to 2 hours 38 minutes - not a great time, but it means something to me because there is a time where even that was way out of reach for me.

So it's the new year, and if I want to be able to post this again next year, I need to figure out what I need to do to get there. I do need to get back to watching what I eat - I've been really lax about it, and I work out enough that I can get away with it - but I'd like to be a little more careful, so that if I ever need to cut back a little on the exercise I can still fit into my pants - and because eating a healthy diet is in general a good idea. Before races, I had started adding an extra 15 minutes or so of running on my treadmill late at night to my routine, and I need to start that up again and keep it up. I want to keep up the road races - they are good exercise, a nice chance to see other runners and different parts of the city, and a great way to acquire t-shirts. I'd like to do another 10k or two, as well - it's a short enough race that i can focus on speed instead of just on trying to make it to the finish line, and that I can feel good the next day instead of feeling like I got run over by a truck.

And hopefully I'll have another good picture to post here next year.

(picture note - pics are in order, starting in 2004. For some reason, I can't find my 2010 pic, so that is missing. There wasn't a major change.)