First let me start by saying how happy I am to share my journey of running with you.  In order for that we need to skip back to the beginning of 2014.  At the age of 39 I decided to live a healthier lifestyle.  I never felt I was overweight or unhealthy, but looking back now, I probably was.  So I started off changing my diet by slowly removing not so healthy items and adding in the healthier option.

By July of 2014 I started to add running into my daily life.  No long distance, in fact I was never really focused on the miles, just the time.  Started running for fifteen minutes, three days a week, and every few weeks I would add five minutes to my time.  At first I just ran on my treadmill at home because I just was not comfortable running in the neighborhood.  I thought, I am not a runner, what will the neighbors think?

After a few weeks, I decided to run outside in my neighborhood. I wish I’d started this earlier!  By running outside I got to explore my neighborhood like I have never before.  I took time to look at everything and also noticed many more of my neighbors, who I gave the runners wave to.  I would run across many different animals like, deer, turtles, and bears (I will save that story for a later blog).  I would run for thirty minutes for my short runs, then add time each week to my Saturday longer runs.

Running outside in the summertime though brought on new challenges.  What to do about those chasing dogs, what happens when it rains, or why are my nipples chaffing?  The chasing dogs stopped after the owners found out there is a runner in the neighborhood. They really took care of not letting their dogs out while I was running by, thank you!  For rainy weather, I liked running in the light rain and as long as there was no lightning, it was an outside run day.

Well now onto this nipple chaffing thing.  Once I started running five or more miles on my long Saturday runs and then jumping in the shower I noticed I had painful stinging on my nipples.  What was that?!  So I started searching on the internet.  There must be something for this, who would want to run with such pain on your nipples.  I thought this might stop my enjoyment of running, because no way am I going to have sensitive nips for days after a run.  So after searching and reading articles I bought a product, I will not name that brand here.  It was ok and worked for what I wanted, until my first race.

Well to skip ahead, my first race was a 5k in April 2016 at the Run Disney Star Wars Dark Side in Orlando Florida.  First I never thought I would run in a race, I thought I was going to just be a runner on my treadmill or the back roads.  Well at my job I plan for my clients and their goals, and thought to myself, let’s make a goal and plan to achieve it.  So If I was going to do a race it should be a fun one, so why not a Star Wars themed race?  So I signed up to run the 5k on Friday and the 10K on Saturday.

So I continued with my training to do my 5k and 10K by doing a 30 minute run on Tuesday and Thursdays, and increasing my distance for my Saturday runs every other week.  Well it was time for the race and I had my picture taken just before the 5k and looked at the photo, and realized the nipple chaffing product I was wearing was showing through my shirt.  So, even though they worked well enough, they weren’t discreet or concealing.  So after that race weekend I started searching again for a nip product that was discreet, concealing, and would protect my nips even on long runs.  I found that with a great product called NipEaze and have never gone back.

Up to this race weekend I thought 10K was the longest I was ever going to run.  I was wrong in a big way.  The headline race was the day after my 10k, the half marathon.  I felt like I missed a big part of the race weekend because I was not in the half.  Until this weekend this was never on my mind, of course I was not going to run 13.1 miles.  Well I made a decision right then I will run a half marathon and started searching for one to do in the coming months.  I will save that for another blog entry.  Until the next entry, enjoy your runs and have fun.  If you want to follow along with my current running journey, you can follow me on instagram.com/tfitzbag.

Thanks for reading my first blog!

~Tim