For the first post in my blog I'd like to introduce myself. I'll provide a quick background about myself and what my intentions are for this blog. My name is Chris Nelson, I'm 32 years old and I live in Connecticut. I'm a normal guy. I have a house, a wife, cats, no kids. I run my family's NAPA Auto Parts store in Tolland, CT. Our store has been pretty successful in our 21 years of business. I may touch on this at a later point. Anyone that works in a family business knows the kind of hours you're required to put in, and I'm no different. A typical week for me is 6 days working between 65-70 hours a week. I'm up every day before 6:00 AM to get the day started. Now some of you may say, "6:00 AM?? Come on Chris, that's not bad." I will agree with you, it's not that bad. But there's no such thing as a "break" or "lunch" during the day. Plus, my day isn't over when I get out of work. That's when the real work begins.
I'd say around the age of 10 was when I started being overweight. I ate whatever I wanted, when I wanted. I was athletic all through school, whether it was baseball, basketball, or soccer, but always overweight. In my mid 20's when the dirtbike was gone, and there was no weekend paintball games any more, I started to gain even more weight. A few months after I turned 30 I weighed 280lbs. I should also mention that I'm 6'4" tall. So I decided to give weight loss an honest shot. Well not weight loss specifically, but the gym. I knew if I could get into a routine and ate properly, that I would lose weight. It's science, right? I've always tried to make goals that were actually task-related, not outcome-related. I feel this is why a lot of people fail in their quest to lose weight. They decide "I want to lose 20lbs". When they don't lose it fast enough, they give up. My goal was to go to the gym 3 days a week, for 3 weeks, at least an hour per day. I ate sensibly. No special diets. I ate a bowl of special K for breakfast, a mid-morning granola bar, a small lunch, protein bar mid-afternoon, then a light dinner after the gym. My "light-dinner" was usually Turkey on wheat with Mustard. Nothing else except a small handful of Baked lays. I cut out ALL the soda, and drank a lot of water. That's right, I'd go to the gym AFTER my 10-13 hour workday, then come home for dinner. Is that the best way to lose weight? Probably not. Is it something I could do? Absolutely. After 3 weeks, I'd lost 10 pounds. This was all the motivation I needed. So after about 6 months had gone by of this, my workouts got longer and more intense. My weight had gone from 280 to 229 which in the back of my mind was what I had hoped for. I was in my 220's in High School and hoped to get back to that. My waist went from 40" to 34", I was no longer shopping for 2XL's, and now I was looking for Larges. I donated 14 bags of clothing to the Salvation Army.
If my life hadn't been changed enough, it was about to change in a big way. A new friend of mine, Jared, posted a link on my facebook wall... something called "Tough Mudder". After I watched it once I said "no way, not a chance." Then I showed it to my wife Pam, and said "Look what Jared showed me." Her excitement couldn't be contained. She said right away that we had to do it. By the next day we were both signed up for our very first Tough Mudder which was to be about 5 months later in Vermont. A lot happened in that 5 months. In that 5 months I lost another 20lbs training hard for the tough mudder, I even got my buddy Hass to sign up for the mudder. I was so excited that I signed up for my 2nd Tough Mudder before I even did my first. Now like I said, a lot happened in that 5 months. Pam was hired to be a police officer in a neighboring town and would enter the police academy shortly before we were to do the tough mudder. This was when she got the news that they didn't want her doing it with the fear that she could get hurt and be unable to attend the academy. So it was decided, Hass and I would do the tough mudder together.
My first Tough Mudder would forever change my motivation for working out. I plan to use this blog to show how I prepare for these "Mud events", to review the events, and just to talk about the stuff going on in the world of obstacle course racing.
