Takin' A Look Back At 2017

     2017 was a long stress filled year with A LOT of changes in my life.  I received a promotion at work the led to relocating to a new city.  With that came the stress of finding a place to rent that would accept 3 dogs, selling the house, barely seeing my wife and moving all of our shit to our temporary home.  On top of that putting in long hours at shop, sometimes being there till one in the morning, all while training for and running three marathons.  The hardest part for me really was my eating habits.  There were days and weeks where fast food was my only nutrition choices and despite training for three marathons, my weight has crept up almost 20 fucking pounds and I am not happy about it. 

     The first marathon was the MercyHealth Glass City Marathon that was my first full marathon after my hip surgery, so I had no agenda and just went out and ran it for the fun of it.  That also led me to be interviewed by Matt Fitzgerld for a book he is working on.  

     The second marathon was my return to the Columbus Marathon which was the first marathon I ever ran.  While training, I cut across the yard at our apartment complex and managed to find a rut and twist my ankle with just about a month till race day.  I put myself on crutches for a few days, iced it and even drove two and a half hours to Toledo to have my physical therapist take a look.  Race day I had a plan of what I wanted do that I threw out the window after going out way too fast in the first mile.  I felt like I could do a sub 4 hour marathon again even though I really wasn't ready prepared for it and managed to blow myself up around mile 18.  I did a ton of walking with some running mixed in to grind it out through it to a 4:23:33 finish.  I totally learned a lesson, the hard way, on race nutrition and pacing.

     The third was the Savannah Rock n Roll Marathon while I was visiting my parents.  This time I followed my nutrition and pacing plan, which led to a 4:23:40 finish.  Despite finishing seven seconds slower, I felt great throughout the entire race only to be slowed way down in the last two miles because of the scorching sun and heat I had to deal with.  Don't get me wrong, I was tired, but because I paced properly I was able to walk the mile and a half to the car and run the 5K and 1 mile remix challenge races the next day.

     The minute I got back from Savannah, Mandy and I closed on our new home, and began the stress filled process of working 6 days a week while trying to move from our townhouse to the new house.  Add to the mix that we offered to host Christmas for my family a month later, so we had to paint, move in, organize everything, decorate, clean the townhouse and prep for what turned out to be a wonderful family Christmas.  all while we both work full time jobs.  We managed to get it done and had a wonderful time with my family for Christmas.

     The casualty in all this since I got back from Georgia was my running and strength training.  When people say they don't have time to workout, it usually is a bullshit excuse, I know I used to say it myself when I was 300 pounds, however this time it was true.  All that moving and long hours my body just wasn't having it and what little free time I had was used to rest my sore body.  November 5th was the last day I ran until I hopped on the treadmill December 9th.  Since then it has been like pulling teeth to get me to go running, and that has me worried considering my spring marathon training started this week.

     During all this time I was blogging less and less, which I am sure any of my long time readers noticed.  As you read earlier, I really just didn't have the time, however I was also feeling like my posts were getting redundant and boring, so I decided to just take a break from it.

     Now that my time has started to loosen up some I decided I wanted to try getting back into it, but I felt I really needed a change and what better way than a little re-branding.  I wanted a title that was much shorter and that was still running related, but wasn't completely about weight loss.  Don't get me wrong I will still continue to write about my struggles with my weight, but I wanted something that fit more of me and my personality.  I came up with a few ideas, but most of them were garbage or were already taken in one of the social media venues, and after a couple of weeks it finally hit me The Tatted Runner.  I mean I love to run and I love getting and looking at tattoos so the name seemed to just fit.  I know their are other runners out there currently with more tattoos, and I don't claim to be the guy with "the most tattoos" or even the "coolest" tattoos, but tattoos have been a love of mine since I was in grade school drawing on myself with permanent markers.  So with this change I feel like I don't have to concentrate on just running and weight loss, even though I will continue to write about both.

     That was my quick year in review and I look forward to a great 2018 in a lot of areas of my life.  I turn the BIG 40 this year and I have something I am working on that I personally think will be a fun challenge and great way to celebrate 40 years on this planet!

Thanks for reading!