About 18 months ago I decided to completely change direction as far as my fitness is concerned. When I was in my teens and early to mid 20's I was just sporty in general. I also had the young person's metabolism on my side. As I got older and had a job and obligations, just running around like a loon and getting involved in pick up sports wasn't really an option. The only thing I could reliably fit into my schedule was lifting weights.
I might have an obsessive personality because I really got into it. I never had a competitive sort of bodybuilder physique but that was because I didn't embrace what I would later find out was the most important aspect of it, diet. Later, i would incorporate that as well and I actively avoided cardio out of fear of losing my weight gains. I would bulk and cut and honestly, I looked really good.
But then in my mid 30's I just decided that drinking and hooking up with chicks was the primary focus in my life and without going into too much detail, I was very good at both.
One day when one of those hookups turned into a relationship that ended badly, I looked in the mirror and there was a fat guy looking back at me. I still was very strong, but all that muscle was covered in 30kg of "jiggle." My ex didn't leave me because I was fat, she was unhealthy as well and I guess we don't really need to go into that. But when I decided one day that I was going to work the fat off it shouldn't be all that surprising that I wasn't really capable of very much. I would get winded just trying to run a few hundred meters.
I was likely doing it wrong and pushing too hard and this is the opposite of the sort of advice that I often give to overweight friends of mine that say they want help but these days I always say to just do something that you already can do... something that you don't hate... something that you don't mind doing....
Then keep doing it.
Fast forward to about 18 months ago and I had decided to stop trying to gain muscle. Much of this has to do with my age and photos of I had seen of what actual bodybuilders end up looking like after age takes over, but a lot of it had to do with me being genuinely concerned about my longevity on this planet with my overall health. After the breakup I in fact did manage to get muscular again but my cardio was shit.
I decided at that point that I was willing to sacrifice some muscle mass for the sake of improving my overall cardio instead. It just isn't very likely that you can have both unless you are some sort of genetic superpower like David Goggins.
So I started running... and of course I did a lot of it wrong at the start. I went too hard or wasn't even measuring how fast I was going and I would gas out quickly. I was breaking my own rule about making this something I don't hate.
It took a while, but i figured out my sweet spots for doing a 5k and also later on figured out what pace I need to maintain in order to be able to run for a much longer period of time. Now, I just run for an hour and provided I have the correct nutrition, I am able to do this quite easily.
The idea is to not enter zone 4 or anaerobic too often, but I can't watch this at all times. I have to just "feel it" naturally. I am pretty happy with the fact that I am just jogging at a very comfortable pace and then my watch alerts me that I am doing near 7 minutes per km every now and then. This is bullcrap to people that run competitively but I want you to understand that 18 months ago if I had run just ONE km at this pace I would have needed to stop and probably would have some very sore legs for days afterwards. Now i do this for an hour in a row and only stop because I am out of water and the loop ends at that point near my house.
As the days get cooler I think I will go ahead and do the loop twice because I am certain that I can do it. I'll just stash another bottle of water in the bushes and maybe freeze it solid so that in the hour it takes me to do the loop it will be ice cold and liquid.
The thing that is really pleasing about this all is that all that time ago I set out and had a plan and I stuck with it and am now reaping the rewards. It does take a really long time but now I am at the point where I am wondering what I will be like if I manage to stick with this for another year? I may look back on this milestone and think "I can't believe I was ever that "weak"".
Fitness if you track your progress, can be very rewarding. I think that it is and while my times would be scoffed at by actual athletes, I think about what I was like, and what I am now. I went from a fatass near 120kg couch-surfer, to a 100kg muscle beast, to an 85kg hybrid of both of the last two.
The pros say that you cant be both muscular and excel at long-distance running... but says who?
If I do end up losing a bunch more of my muscle mass at least I won't have saggy "moobs" later in life and lets be real here, that doesn't look good on anyone.
Set a goal, stick with it, and reap the rewards!