Looking further back, I was a pretty competitive athlete when I was younger. I grew up playing most sports, but during my senior year in high school, I started working full time and not working out as much. I assumed that once I got to college, I could hit the gym and get back into shape. I spent way more time drinking beer than working out during my first semester, then I transferred schools and moved in with the woman that I would one day marry. We spent most of our time at school and work, and exercise became one more thing we didn't have time for. At 23, I was huge, out of shape, and barely able to run a quarter mile. This had to change.
Outside of exercising, I graduated college in spring of 2008 and started working full time a week later. I moved into management of a branch of a large retail based corporation, making what I would call decent money. I sat in my office most days and wondered why I disliked my job so much. During the summer of 2009, I heard of a job opening at a small non-profit in a position I felt I would be perfect for, so I did all I could to get my name in there. In August, they interviewed, hired, and started me working with youth that had either dropped out (or been pushed out) of local high schools. This is a big reason that I had time to enter such races and have created relationships with fellow coworkers that feel the same as me about physical activity.
- brad
