when and why did you start running?

I was 19 and quite overweight. The latter was the 'why,' along with the fact that people in my family did it.

jan. 1 2001, 36 years old. my daughter asked me to stop smoking.

dude do a search and you'll find tons of threads like this.

Great thread!! When I was in 9th grade, i went out for the football team, didn't get cut because I was kind of fast, but was 5'6 115lbs. I got leveled doing a crossing route when I was a WR, after shaking out the cobwebs, my head coach Buck Crabb (real name), came up to me and said, I want you to run cross country. He introduced me to the coach, and I started running, good thing because I would have gotten murdered by our H.S. football team, which was really good. 25 yrs later, still running....

i was 9 in 1996 and it was because i legitimately wanted to - the idea of endurance running always appealed to me as a great adventure. so i entered a 2 mile road race and ran 17:22.

before that and throughout most of my childhood i would run with my friends when they biked around. usually i could keep up with them. i had a bike but would get in trouble if i didn't wear a helmet, which i was too embarrassed to do. so i often ran instead. not to mention marathon summer-night games of jailbreak which comprised our entire neighborhood and often involved running hard for 5-10 minutes at a time(i guess they were fartleks).

i ran road races for a few years then joined the middle school team. haven't taken more than three weeks off from running since. ran a 9:07 equivalent last year. my goal used to be to cut my two mile time in half from the first time i ran it but i don't think 8:41 is in the cards for me this lifetime.

I was 16 and had gone out for football with the intention of being an offensive end (I'm old, they didn't even call them wide receivers back then). There was no platooning, which meant I was also supposed to be a defensive end. Heck, I was too peace-loving for that, plus guys on the line were outweighing me by 75 pounds and on offense, if I actually DID ever go out for a long pass, my eyes were so bad I would never have been able to see it.

So I went out for cross country, ostensibly to get in shape for basketball. I did very well in cross country right away, and as for basketball, I had stopped growing at 5'11" and the coach was like the platoon sergeant R. Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket." My options were getting limited. Running it was.

i was 9 in 1996 and it was because i legitimately wanted to - the idea of endurance running always appealed to me as a great adventure. so i entered a 2 mile road race and ran 17:22.

before that and throughout most of my childhood i would run with my friends when they biked around. usually i could keep up with them. i had a bike but would get in trouble if i didn't wear a helmet, which i was too embarrassed to do. so i often ran instead. not to mention marathon summer-night games of jailbreak which comprised our entire neighborhood and often involved running hard for 5-10 minutes at a time(i guess they were fartleks).

i ran road races for a few years then joined the middle school team. haven't taken more than three weeks off from running since. ran a 9:07 equivalent last year. my goal used to be to cut my two mile time in half from the first time i ran it but i don't think 8:41 is in the cards for me this lifetime.

johnny langwanker,

That's a nice story. can you post it AGAIN?