Endless Road was created to help interested readers become more health conscious with their lives, and maybe inspire a few others along the way. By no means am I a health nut, but I do live a healthy lifestyle and work very hard to challenge myself both physically and mentally. Here I will tell you about the goals I set for myself and how I work to achieve them (and lots of little secrets along the way).
In 2008 I ran my first full marathon, the Flying Pig in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had a goal to run under 4 hours, which I felt was a big challenge since I had no running experience that took me much past 3-5 miles. Actually, up until this point of my life I was not physically fit by any means. I did know a bit about proper eating habits (my parents taught me a lot about healthy eating when I was growing up), ran a 5k here and there, but overall didn't do a whole lot of exercising. After following the Hal Higdon training plan to a T, I successfully met my marathon goal and ran a 3:55:23!
You're probably wondering why someone would decide overnight that they want to run a sub 4 hour marathon when they have little to none running experience. The answer to that is simple. Shortly after starting my college career I had a close friend come to me about a professor of his that rode his bicycle across the United States. Why was he telling me this story? Because he knew I was his only friend silly enough to say "dude, let's do that". Long story short, I got a part time job at bike shop so one of us would have a little knowledge about bikes and began planning our we could make this dream come true. Our trip was planned to take place during the summer of 2009 (post college last hurrah) and was quickly approaching. It was at this time I decided there was no better way to whip myself into the best shape of my life than to run 26.2 miles. So there you go, I ran the marathon to get lazy butt in good enough shape to pedal day after day for an entire summer.
After having the marathon under my belt, I was ready to take on the coast to coast bike ride. We dubbed the ride "Wright Flyers Bike Ride 2009" since I went to Wright State and Ross was a UD Flyer. The bike tour was fully loaded (we carried our own stuff, with NO help) and would take us from the coast ofVirginia, across 8 other states and to the coast of Oregon. After gaining some sponsors and organizing a charity to ride for, we set off on our journey in June of 09'. After fifty days of peddling and over 4000 miles of roads we reached the Oregon coast in August. We raised a bit of money for The American Brain Tumor Association and had an incredible life experience. (Click here to check out the blog from the ride)
Since the summer of 2009 I've done a few other full and half marathons, countless short distance duathlons and triathlons and raced my way to a category 3 road cyclist. During that time I've met a ton of awesome people and learned to many life lessons to count. I think the most important thing I've learned though is that you can never stop pushing yourself. So many people stop pushing themselves as soon as they meet a goal, or give up in the process. If you want to run a 5k, great. But after you run that 5k you've got to keep yourself moving in that positive direction! My goal is to show you how I keep myself moving in that direction.
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