The Initial Spark

The last place I expected my inspiration for fitness to come from was my family. Back in the day (one year ago), I worked out 10-12 times a week, every week. Over a two-year stretch, the most days I took off in a row were 10. I was obsessed with working out. I had to be in shape. The motivation was simple: improve my performance – actually, it was mostly to keep from getting my ass kicked too badly on the track.

See, I used to be a Division I athlete (sort of). I ran two years at Cal Poly, a small D-1 school on the California Central Coast. I think the coach might have had a mental lapse (not a stretch) in deciding to keep me on the team. Short, slight-framed white kid who didn’t even make it out of his league finals meet in high school – sign him up for a D-1 school. OK, so I really wasn’t that bad. I was cut my first time trying out for the team, but worked myself into halfway decent shape (decent enough to keep up with the scholarship thoroughbreds in fall workouts) and deserved a spot on the roster the next time around. My time on the team was a fallacy, though.

Each fall I would run at the front of the pack, sometimes beating out scholarship athletes who sat on their ass all summer. As the year went on, the genetic beasts would slowly pass, and then crush me. I never contributed a point to the team at a conference meet and didn’t improve my time after setting a new personal-best my first time in uniform. (In all fairness, I only ran in three meets my first year on the team and was injured for more than half the season my second year on the team.)

I like to think I was the token “Rudy.” I showed up to practice on-time every day (a task worth noting at Cal Poly), kept the thoroughbreds honest and generally kept a low profile. God (whether you believe in him or not; I do, so you’re going to have to deal with a smattering of pious references) didn’t intend for me to be a college sprinter. I should have guessed when I topped out at 5 feet, 8 inches and a scrawny, distance runner-like frame, but I’ve always been stubborn and kind of had this dream to be a D-1 athlete. Most frustrating about my experience at Cal Poly was watching naturally-gifted athletes frequently waste the opportunities granted to them. I would have offered my first-born son (Frank Stranzl VII) for an athletic scholarship. True story. Part of a college education paid for with the stipulation that I must run track. What a tough life. And yet I see scholarship athletes disappear, never to be seen again, on a yearly basis. Apparently running for a college education cramps their social lives.

My fun (cliché as it sounds) was just being on the team. You see, I was really stoked about making a D-1 roster. Making the team settled the score on one of my lifetime goals. My friends from back home congratulated me and everything. Petaluma, Calif. even threw me a tickertape parade (I never understood that phrase, but it sounds cool). Basically, making the team was kind of a big deal.

Before I became a Mustang, I was that shiny-eyed kid (a 21-year-old kid at that), who was totally amped out of his mind that he got to workout with his heroes. (A bit melodramatic?) I truly held college athletes in high regard. I envisioned a group of highly motivated individuals who lived and breathed track and field, athletes who wanted nothing more than to win that conference title. After all, D-1 athletes are machines built for sports, people who are competitive, dedicated and driven, right? Not so much. A number of the assholes, I mean the God-given, genetic freaks, don’t give a crap about the team, couldn’t care less whether their performances improve and don’t even enjoy working out. WTF mate? If I only had the talent that some of these people did. Maybe if my diet had included Jaeger Bombs, Natty and Jose Cuervo I would have been a better runner. I knew I did something wrong – instead of HGH and anabolic steroids, I should have been boozing it up at the bars. What was I thinking? Bitter, I am.

(Rants such as this will be frequent. My obviously skewed view of the world and how it should work creates ample opportunity for me to get pissed off.)

Succinct wrap-up of what you just read: I used to be in great shape. Now I’m not. More importantly, but less relevant, I’m resentful of the genetic lottery and people who fail to live up to their full potential. Moving on…

A few days ago, I was home in the fitness bastion of Petaluma, Calif. This is the same town where, if jogging around town, cars would drive by really slow so that the occupants could get a good look and say, “What the hell is that dumbass doing?” Many a summer I would jog from my house to the track and find out later that a friend saw me (from the comfort of their air-conditioned house or vehicle). Later, said friend would ask the obvious: “So, why were you running?” I was always too polite to throw out a response like, “So, why are you 50-pounds overweight?” In the many summers my running buddies and I spent at Casa Grande and Petaluma high schools, we were more likely to see a group of social outcasts (I swear they were always those Everyone Else Is A Tool So I’m Going To Dress Up In All Black Because That’s Unique Even Though My Friends All Wear The Same Thing – We’re So Rebellious kids) than fellow runners. It was a culture shock when I moved to San Luis Obispo, Calif. where it was uncommon not to see a biker or jogger on a given day.

Ahem. So I was back in PTown and my dad asks me if I want to go to the gym with him on Saturday morning. Stunned, mostly because he never once watched or offered to work out congruently with me in all my years of running track, I told him I would love to go to the gym the next morning. Eight hours of sleep later, I woke up and, sure enough, he wanted to go to the gym. I spent 20 minutes on the treadmill, lifted some weights (some meaning about as much as an infant fresh out of the womb) and was very proud to see my dad trudging away on his treadmill for the better part of 45 minutes. I was feeling that 20-minute treadmill session with all of about two-dozen workouts to my credit since the conclusion of my illustrious track career. Still, I was happy just to be there with my dad (gotta love those father-son bonding moments).

One morrow later, my dad asks me again if I would like to join him at the gym. “Whoa, hold on a minute here. It’s Sunday, the day of rest. And it’s still the a.m. I was up late last night – well, ok, maybe not, but I’m still tired and it is Sunday. And we worked out yesterday. Do we really need to go at it again today? I’m sore, too. If I go, I might tire myself out too much and be sore for our intramural basketball game in a couple days. It’s a playoff game, so I want to be ready to go. I mean really, if I don’t go it’ll be fine. I’ll just do some push-ups and sit-ups and call it a day. That’s plenty. No need to overdo it.”

Then it hit me. I was showing all the symptoms of a lazy fat-ass. (Sorry if you happen to be one, but take offense anyway. It’s nothing to be proud of. I’m a mean guy, I know, but somebody had to say it. There will be no political correctness in this blog). Seriously though, I’ve put on 15 pounds in the last year. Not an astronomical amount, but when you consider that one year ago I was 15-pounds lighter and it was mostly muscle, that’s a mind-boggling number.

I’m not quite ready to join reality television’s Biggest Loser yet, but I am ready to put myself to the test. You see, one of my best friends is a big guy. In fact, he’s a huge guy who happens to be closing in on the century mark…times four. He’s put on about 100 pounds in the last two years. I’ve always given him a hard time about his weight because, quite frankly, he has the ability to change his life and I’m worried about him. More on Big Jon later.

I’ve always thought that, if he really wanted to, he could drop that weight. But, here I am putting on some weight of my own. Is it fair of me to tell him to shape up when I can’t? In all fairness, he has terrible metabolism and he’s genetically fat, or so I’ve heard from him before (because the liter of soda he drinks almost daily and his fast-food diet has nothing to do with his obesity), but I’m holding a double standard here. Sure, I’m not 400 pounds and gaining weight at the same rate as Big Jon, but I am gaining weight.

The perceptive reader will note that I am not fat and that this really isn’t a miracle story about how I dropped a million pounds and now I’m going to be on a Subway commercial. This account will cover my journey back to fitness – all the indecision, the excuses, the unwillingness to commit to a regular training schedule that everyone goes through. More important, I want to find what motivates me, and others, to workout. The only reason I hit the track over my years in competitive running was to improve performance. Now, without the bonus of competing for a team, where am I going to dredge up the necessary motivation to get back in shape?