For most of my life I’ve been chubby, unhappy, and unhealthy in general. Once I started to get into rock climbing a couple years back (junior year high school), I began to lose the weight, and ended up shaving 50lbs off in roughly 6 months. I also began running that year, and while I could only barely finish 1 mile, progress was being made. Up until the beginning of this year, the furthest I’d ever run was 4 miles. I gained a huge amount of confidence and went from a looking like a chubby marshmallow to nearly having a six pack. Then the pandemic hit.
After virtually everything closed, my main drive for health and fitness was no longer available to me. Rock Climbing was what kept me going, but I couldn’t climb anymore. I started running more and more often to fill that gap. Eventually I went from 5 to 7 miles and took off from there. Shortly after this I ran my first half marathon, something I never thought was even thinkable for me. Unfortunately things got worse beyond the pandemic, and I randomly developed a blood vessel disorder called erythromelalgia that causes extreme burning pains on the skin of my feet when exposed to friction, heat, or exercise. I was out of commission for about a week until the condition got a bit better, and resumed running, but it’s never gone away completely.
Over the months prior to the end of this year, I ran another 7 half marathons, and hit a max distance of 16 miles. I never even fathomed being able to push my body to this extent, but the pandemic ended up putting me in a spot where this was all I could focus on. Even with ankle sprains, knee injuries, and this ridiculous blood vessel disorder, somehow I still kept it up. While my eating habits were terrible this year, and it was full of misery in many respects, at least I squeezed out some accomplishments amidst the chaos.
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