Meet Rocky who's on journey to 52 marathons in 52 weeks.
”NEVER AGAIN”, were the words that kept going through my
head that early March 2002 morning as I struggled through what was my first
marathon, the unseasonably warm L.A. Marathon.
Had I even known it was possible to DNF a marathon, I’m sure I would’ve
done so, but, as they say, ignorance is bliss, although ignorance was mostly
painful in this case.
I felt prepared for this marathon, having run a couple sub
2:10 half marathons leading up to the race, and thought that breaking 5 hours
would be easy enough. At the time, I had
gone from about a 250 pound non-runner, to a 220 pound casual runner and
trained for about 8 months for my first marathon. Instead, however, after opening with a 2:15
opening half, I walked and cursed, a lot, for the remainder of the race and
finished in 5:37 with a scowl on my face.
Somewhere during that race, however, my brain must have
short circuited for there I was lining up three months later, with very little
training in between, for the 2002 Rock N Roll San Diego Marathon and despite a
10 pound weight gain in the interim, I would shave 31 minutes off my marathon
time and finish in a time of 5:06.
Even so, I did not respect the marathon and took
the distance for granted, signed up for another marathon, the 2002 Maraton De
Pacifico in Vina Del Mar, Chile, in early December and, once again, did very
little training and, once again, managed to pack on another 10 pounds to do the
race at 240 pounds on my 5’10” frame.
This race was a disaster and I was DFL (Dead F***ing Last)
for the first 20 miles of the race, amongst about 130 runners, and had the
sweeper ambulance on my heels that entire time.
When I did finally pass a runner, a young man in his early 20’s who I
outweighed by 100 pounds, I could not help but take out my frustration on him,
yelling at him in broken Spanish and asking how he could let a fat old guy like
me pass him. I’d pass a few more
runners, but not many, on my way to a 5:17 finish time, but it hurt badly
enough that I wouldn’t run another marathon for more than half a decade.
During that half decade break, my weight only continued to
climb and by September 2006, not only was I the heaviest I had ever been but I
was also at the tail end of a crumbling marriage and I only awoke from my
slumber when my then wife, who was struggling with her own weight, walked
through the front door, empowered from the Overeaters Anonymous class she had
attended, and announced, “First I am going to lose weight and then I am going
to divorce you!”
That announcement was nothing short of a blessing for it was
then, on September 01, 2006, that I was never more determined to lose weight
and start a new chapter in my life. By
the end of December 2006, determined to make a fresh start, I had dropped 30
pounds, filed for divorce and signed a 1 year lease on a penthouse apartment in
Old Town Pasadena. Equally important,
though, I had started running again.
In 2007, I would run a few half marathons but a marathon
wasn’t really on my radar, as quite honestly, I was still scarred by my
marathon experiences of years earlier.
Plus, really, my weight was still yo yo’ing due to too much dating and
not enough training.
By Spring of 2008, however, I had put together a few good
months on training and my weight stabilized around 230 pounds. Not ideal, by any means, but I felt I was
ready to give the marathon another go and signed up for the 2008 Rock N Roll
San Diego Marathon which I would go onto run in 4:43 for a 23 minute PR,
despite being no lower in weight for it than when I ran it 6 years earlier.
Once again, however, I did not respect the marathon, and
while I would go onto run another marathon eight weeks later, the 2008 San
Francisco Marathon, and shave off another 8 minutes with a respectable 4:35
finish, not learning a thing from my first incarnation as a marathon runner, I
wouldn’t run another marathon until December 2008 and would struggle to a 4:51
finish at the Tucson Marathon, despite the 2,000’ drop in elevation from start
to finish.
I saw a familiar pattern emerging and I did not want history
to repeat itself—I had run 3 marathons in 2002 and then didn’t run another one
for 5.5 years, and now I had just run 3 marathons in 2008 and did not want the
next one to be 5.5 years later. It was
then that I got what then sounded like a completely crazy idea in my head and
that was to run a marathon a month in 2009.
At the time, it sounded nearly impossible, but I was determined to reach
my goal.
Along the way in 2009, in what has been
instrumental to my running, I discovered and became a Marathon Maniac and by
the end of the year, I was on a quest to achieve 7 Maniac Stars by way of
running 13 marathons in 78 days. By late
2009, I would lower my PR to 4:09 at the Santa Barbara International Marathon,
but, as my trend was, despite all the marathons—19, in all in 2009—I still did
not really respect the distance and was just going through the motions, meaning
that my weight was still averaging 225 pounds.
The
lack of weight loss was little surprise because although I was running plenty
of marathons, I was still eating too much and my social life was every bit as
important as my running. It would not be
uncommon for my wife and I to go out whether to a party or a wedding into the
wee hours of the morning, only for me to get up and struggle through yet
another marathon.
Although
in 2010 I would go onto run even more marathons, 21 in total, I really wasn’t
in the greatest shape and wouldn’t come close to my then 4:09 PR, and people
would continue to be surprised when I said I ran marathons and, why not, as I
was still obese and hardly looked like a runner. But, I was happy to be running and even
introduced running to my beautiful wife, Renee, and we would run most all of
her marathons side by side and she, too, became a Marathon Maniac (#2200).
Despite 21 marathons, however, I would gain a dozen pounds
in 2010 and while it bothered me enough not to really want to look too much at
my marathon photos, it didn’t bother me enough to actually do something about
it. By the time I would run the Kauai
Marathon in September, 2010, it was a minor miracle that I could still break 5
hours and on the toughest road marathon I’ve yet done, but somehow, I managed
just that with a 4:55 finish in Kauai on the hilliest, most humid and warmest
marathon course, I’ve done to date.
2011 was a rude awakening, but a long overdue
one, and by the time my wife and I ran the Paris and London Marathons on back
to back weekends, I was terribly out of shape, approaching 235 pounds, and
struggled mightily to sub 5 hour finishes at each race, actually holding my
wife back from a faster time at Paris, and that was a first as I was usually
able to run circles around her. My
photos from the Paris Marathon served as plenty of incentive as I could hardly
believe how big I allowed myself to become and I felt nearly as bad at the end
of the Paris Marathon as I had felt that March 2002 day at the end of my first
marathon in L.A.
If
my photos from the Paris Marathon were not enough incentive, a photo of me at
around 235 pounds, munching away on a waffle cone in Armenia, an extension to
our Paris and London (and midweek Venice) trip, was the straw that broke the
camel’s back. I saw I certainly had no
business wolfing down a waffle cone when I could barely still fit in the clothes
I was wearing!
That was the wakeup call I needed and I worked harder than I
had in the second half of 2011 to get back in decent shape and I would finish
the year at 220 pounds and would run a semi respectable 4:13 at the Tucson
Marathon, returning to the scene of the crime that was my mediocre 4:51
marathon finish of two years earlier.
While the start of 2012 was a challenge, as I was killing
myself in the gym yet gained a few pounds through late February. Fortunately, I was finally able to get my
diet more under control in March and that would translate into my first PR in
nearly 2.5 years with a 4:08 at the 2012 L.A. Marathon, nearly 90 minutes
faster than I had run it a decade earlier.
A month later, I was more determined than ever,
after being told countless times that PR’ing at the Big Sur International
Marathon would be nearly impossible. I
used such talk as incentive to work harder than ever in the few weeks leading
up to Big Sur, especially hill training, and I went on to run a 4:05 PR at Big
Sur and knew then that a sub 4 marathon was just around the corner.
2012
has also been a year of volunteering and that has come in the form each of
pacing other runners as an official pacer as I have done at each the Carlsbad,
Surf City, San Luis Obispo and O.C. Marathon and also simply as a race
volunteer, racing to put together as many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
and fill as many hand held bottles as I could for trail runners. To be involved with running in this
capacity, while partially selfless, has also been of tremendous benefit and
helped my growth each as a runner and a person and I look forward to more
pacing and volunteering opportunities in the future.
Success after success has come in recent months and I give
partial credit to others such as my wife for all her support, to other runners
like the one and only Walking Diva, Yolanda Holder, who makes it look so
effortless and is at nearly every race I would do, to Nadia Ruiz Gonzales who
is living proof that a runner does not have to run 60+ miles a week to turn in
solid marathon performances and to others like race director extraordinaire,
Charlie Alewine, whose nearly weekly races allow me to get out there and push
myself on any given weekend. To this
very day, I am adverse to running double digit miles unless I get a race medal
for my efforts and without Charlie Alewine Racing, there is no way I would
running at my current level and still improving.
My breakthrough moment as a runner would finally
occur on June 03rd of this year, at the Ojai To Ocean Marathon, as I had my
most perfect day ever as a runner, and with my weight down to 200 pounds, I
pounded out a totally unexpected 3:43 finish for a 22 minute PR, with my wife
and other Maniac friends cheering
me on and running much of the first half with my Maniac friend, Steve
Hernandez.
With
the sub 4 marathon finish monkey off my back, my goal has now shifted to join
so many other incredible runners such as Yolanda Holder, Larry Macon, Ed
“Jester” Ettinghausen and Tony “Endorphin Dude” Nguyen, just to name a few, and
earn my place as a 10 Star Maniac, and with my wife’s continued support, I
expect to reach that goal possibly by the end of this year, despite a slow
start, relatively speaking with “just” 16 marathons through the first half of
the year.
One of the highlights of 2012 was running four marathons in seven days with
many runner friends—all tougher than me—who were running seven marathons in
seven days as part of Charlie Alewine Racing’s “Summer Seven” races. Unexpectedly, I would finish my fourth
marathon in seven days with just my second sub 4, a 3:55 at Summer Seven
Marathon #7.
At this point, down to about 195 pounds, my lowest weight
since my college years, I feel like there is no going back…no going back to
270, 250 or even 200+ pounds, no going back to 5 hour marathons, no going back
to a time when I did not respect the marathon, no going back, period…only going
forward and going forward with a big smile on my face, blessed to be a fixture
at Southern California races and beyond, with so many other incredible runners
and with so many more great runners yet to meet and so many great races yet to
be discovered and run!
-Rocky-
