Yesterday, I threw out an idea for a blog to do a Q&A session with you guys. I wasn’t sure what kind of response I’d get, but you sent a lot of questions my way. I’m going to answer them in the order they were received, and I’m not weeding anything out. So, read away. Then ask away.

As a quick introduction, just in case you’ve never been here, I’m attempting to run 61 marathons this year to raise money for a charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far I’m through 58. Click here to see why.

Name three things you wish you could have done differently.
1. I would have had somebody to take care of PR and marketing for me. If I couldn’t have found somebody to do it on a volunteer basis, I would have paid for it. I had somebody give me a proposal last fall, but I didn’t have a budget for it. In hindsight, I think it would have paid for itself with increased fundraising. I think it would have taken a lot of stress off of me, because all of that is on my shoulders, in addition to everything else. And really, what’s the point in doing something to spread the word about something if you’re not spreading the word?

I’ve found that what I’m doing makes it pretty easy to get attention if you just speak up. But I haven’t really found the time or energy to do that consistently and that’s definitely been a downfall.

2. I would have focused less on building teams for individual races and worked harder on a few more strong campaigns. We’re starting to do well with these satellite runs and the Operation Jack Marathon. We won the Chase contest in the summer. I think a good, concentrated effort at maybe one or two other campaigns would have been a big help. Instead, I worried too much about making hay out of each individual race early on and I couldn’t get into a good routine. I guess what it boils down to is that I didn’t have a good enough plan. I had a plan to run 61 marathons. I didn’t have a good plan on how to capitalize on that. And then I felt like I let a lot of people down in the process.

3. I would have taken up offers from people who volunteered to help. I didn’t know what I could delegate with this, and I certainly didn’t delegate enough. I had all sorts of offers from people, but I never figured out how to delegate, so I didn’t. As a result, I got buried alive and I dropped the ball on a lot of things. Falling so behind in the last four months of the year, when I finally lost the feeble grip I had, was extremely frustrating.

How many cheeseburgers did you eat this year? How much ice cream? I need a food recap vs. calories burned!
I didn’t keep count, but I’d estimate I ate 65-70 cheeseburgers this year, about 1.25 a week. I talk a lot about the bad things I eat because that’s fun, but I eat healthy, too. I don’t talk about the grilled chicken salad I had for dinner on Monday. Or the tuna fish sandwich on wheat with an apple and some crackers I had for lunch yesterday. I don’t post pictures of the grilled chicken sandwich on wheat from Subway I ate post-race on Sunday (loaded with veggies, no mayo), but y’all know when I go to In-N-Out!

I do like a good cheeseburger, and I figure one, sometimes two, per week is okay. But there’s no way I’d eat one every day. A lot of time, beef really hits the spot after a race. And there have been several weeks where I haven’t made it to In-N-Out. I have two really close friends I’ve gone there with on basically a weekly basis since 1993, aside from when I lived out of state. One of them got a new job this year and we haven’t been able to get together too often since I’m out of town on the weekends. So all-in-all, I’d estimate I’ve had about 70 cheeseburgers this year. I know it wasn’t part of the question, but I’d estimate I’ve had grilled or baked chicken 225 times. I don’t think I’ve had fried chicken once.

As for ice cream, I’d estimate I’ll finish the year consuming roughly 100,000 calories worth of ice cream. I eat ice cream that’s fairly low in calories. I aim for 140 calories or less per half a cup and I have about a cup as my typical serving. I eat it, and I enjoy it, but I don’t have huge servings. Well, sometimes I might. I had a streak of 166 consecutive days eating ice cream or frozen yogurt this year, and I’d estimate I’ll have it 340 times this year. So the math of 300×340 is 102,000 calories.

Best new piece of running paraphernalia? Which race was run the best? Best race shirt? This year’s running epiphany?
The best new piece of running paraphernalia? Hmmm, that’s tough. I’m pretty low-key and don’t buy much. I think I’d go with my Zensah compression pants, which I wear after races, because they make my legs feel so much better immediately. I had all sorts of problems with cramping on planes, because I always fly the same day as the race, but once I started wearing those, I didn’t have that problem any more. As for something I used while actually running, I tried arm warmers for the first time in Tahoe and really liked them. They do the trick, and you can take them off when it starts to warm up. You can roll them down and pull them back up, or you can just take them off and tuck them in the back of your shorts. And they only cost about $9. Can’t beat that!

As for the race that was run the best, I’d probably go with Boston. The B.A.A. knows how to pull off a marathon. I thought Chicago did a great job, too. And as much as I don’t like Rock ‘N Roll events, they tend to put on fairly smooth events (aside from parking and traffic sometimes).

Best race shirt, I think I’ll go with Fargo. It was a tech pullover with a zipper about 1/4 of the way down the chest, something that comes in handy. I got so many tech shirts and t-shirts, both long sleeve and short sleeve, so it was nice to get something different that was useful.

As for an epiphany, well, I’ve said it, but now I really mean it and believe and understand it when I tell people that you have to keep running fun. It’s a hobby, and if you can’t enjoy your hobby, what’s the point? That’s what I’ve told people for years, but now I really understand it and believe it. Several times over the past month, I’ve been running marathons thinking how much fun I’m not having, how joyless the running is, how much I’d love to never run another marathon after this year. But running has been such a blessing for me and I’ve used it to help others. I can’t just give it up. I need to find the fun, though. Right now, it’s not fun.

Why 61?
I get asked this one a lot. I’m a baseball fan and I like Roger Maris better than Babe Ruth. Good thing I don’t like Barry Bonds. 73 is too many!

Actually, I planned on roughly a marathon a week. I had a few doubles I wanted to do and when I mapped out the schedule, I had 57 or 58 races on there. I figured I’d find a few more to make it a nice, round number. 60! So I did. Earlier this year, Lance Haney, an Operation Jack supporter in Alabama, asked me to add Memphis on to the schedule and run with him. I added it and made it 61, although he didn’t make it because he got a stress fracture in his foot.

So, that’s why 61. Kind of a weird number, but I’ve never accused myself of being normal.

That’s All For Today
If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll add them to the list. I’m going to run at least two or three more of these in the next few weeks because I have a lot of questions in the queue.

Have a great day!

I always tell people that I started running after I started walking when I turned 30, but I’m coming clean today. I had a brief stint as a jogger when I was 24. I wanted to lose weight and look good for my wedding photos. I lost 40 pounds in three months, so I want everybody to learn from my experience. That’s right — don’t have your bachelor party two nights before your wedding!

Real quick, just in case you’ve never been here before, click here to see why I’m trying to run 61 marathons in 2010 for Train 4 Autism. We’re in December now, so I’m getting pretty close to that goal. I’m through 58, only three to go!

Anyways, for the most part, I was really heavy (261 pounds) when I turned 30, so I started walking and then one thing led to another and I was able to run 3.4 miles in 40 minutes on my hills about 4 times a week about eight months later, in July 2005. That’s when I feel like I started to run. But in 1999, I took up jogging to lose weight for my wedding.

Coming out of college, I was pretty heavy, about 245 pounds. In late February of 1999, I was determined to lose weight for my wedding, which was on May 23. Those wedding pictures last forever. I had to look good!

I was living in Kansas City and basically all alone. Tiffany was out west and all I did was go to work and go home, waiting until we got married. I used to drink a good 75 or so beers a week while I was in college (I graduated in December 1998). I don’t want to say I was an alcoholic. Maybe I was. But I liked to party and I had a ridiculous tolerance. I was a big guy with plenty of weight to soak it all up and I drank about five nights a week when I was in school. I also ate a lot of pizza and Burger King.

So starting in late February, when I moved to Kansas City from Manhattan (Kan.) to start my job, I was determined to do what I could to get in shape. I changed my habits, cold turkey. I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol or pop once I got there. Every single meal I ate was prepared inside my kitchen. And when I say every single meal, I mean every single meal. I didn’t eat at any kind of a restaurant between the end of February and May 17. I didn’t know the first thing about nutrition, but I kept my calories low and my fat intake very, very low.

I started to exercise, walking a bit. I worked that up to jogging and I covered four miles a day, maybe four or five times a week. When my fitness peaked back then, I covered those four miles in 44 minutes. Twice, I ran six miles. Well, jogged. I did pushups (girl pushups, on my knees) and drank a lot of water.

I got down from 245 in late February to 203 on the day of my wedding. When you have excess weight like that, it melts like butter when you work at it. I flew out to California three days before my wedding and people were shocked at the transformation. I was so excited to be getting this positive feedback. It was a nice ego boost for a recovering fat guy.

Two nights before the wedding, I went out, um, establishment hopping in a gigantic limousine with about 12-14 friends. I had a beer at the rehearsal dinner the night before, but that was the only alcohol I’d had in three months. I had also shed about 20 percent of my body weight. For whatever reason, it didn’t occur to me that my tolerance had dropped drastically.

In the hour or so before we headed out, I had eight beers. Normally, I would have had about a dozen before going to the bars when I was in school. So throwing back eight beers wasn’t any kind of a big deal. We got rolling, went to pick up some people and I kept drinking like I normally did. I peed in places I shouldn’t have and started getting goofy, so it was business as usual.

We got to the first, uh, establishment, and I had a few more beers. I really didn’t keep count at that point. I might have mixed, too. I don’t really remember. I just know we left to go to another place and as as we got there, I got sick and threw up pretty badly all over the parking lot. I never threw up when I was in college. I clearly wasn’t the rock star I used to be.

Amazingly, at the place we went to, there was an establishment that women could go to, and surprise, surprise — Tiff was there with her gang for her bachelorette party! I don’t remember much of anything other than laying in the limo with my head face down and hanging out of the open door. There was a little bit of commotion with Tiff’s group, but the brain cells that hold that memory died that night. All of my friends went inside for a couple of hours, except for a friend of mine, Rob, who stayed back with me.

My next memory is waking up the next morning on the floor in the hallway of my parents’ house. I got up because I had to pick up a friend of mine who was flying in from Kansas for the wedding. I had a nasty hangover and headache and I had fairly foggy vision in one of my eyes. It was totally weird and I felt like garbage. I picked up Tiff at her parents’ house and we went to the airport. While we were there, she looked at me and told me my eye was swollen.

I was relieved, in a way. At least that explained the nasty pain in my eye. There was no discoloration — it was just swollen. But I had no idea how it happened. When we got back to the house, I spent all day holding ice on my eye, hoping the swelling would go down. That made me feel pretty proud, considering all the out-of-town relatives were over for a barbecue. But I had to do what I had to do — the wedding was less than 24 hours away!

I talked to my friends and found out what happened. Apparently, two of my good friends carried me in, but they were a little drunk, too. They accidentally knocked my eye into a doorknob. Oops!

I slept with ice on my face the night before my wedding. I woke up on my wedding day after a lousy night of sleep, hoping the swelling had decreased. I saw my stepmom and asked her how my eye looked, and she hesitated for a second before suggesting I just look in the mirror for myself.

Sure enough, it was a dark shade of purple. And yeah, it was still swollen. We put makeup on my eye so it would be the correct color, but there was nothing we could do about the swelling. The color was fine for the ceremony, but by the end of the reception, it started to wear off and you can see the purple in parts of the video.

I have to say, it was pretty embarrassing to walk around with a black eye on my honeymoon. It was a bummer at the time, but it’s no big deal at this point and we look back on it and laugh. It makes for a heck of a war story.

Hopefully, any bride-to-be or even groom-to-be can learn from my experience. No bachelor parties two days before your wedding!

So much for losing weight and looking good in the pictures, huh?