I an a not the kind of guy that ever thought of himself as an athlete. My interests since I was a teenager have all been of the indoor variety. I studied theatre for a number of years then got into playing around with computers (building and repairing, mainly) and then, in a fairly convoluted turn I became a Kitchen and Bath Designer. Not exactly activities that necessarily require much in the way of physical activity.

In my late 30s I got divorced and decided it was time to take a long hard look at myself. The first priority was to make some changes in the way I live, in particular what a poor job I was doing of taking care of my health. I was thin until my mid 20s without any effort but that went away rapidly when my metabolism slowed down. I went from 150lbs. at 20 years old to 250lbs at my heaviest in my mid-30s. I am slowly working my way back down but I have a long way to go before I get to my current target weight of 180lbs. (I’m 6’3” so I’d rather not get all the way back to the 150s.)

So I decided to become an athlete. Specifically a runner. I can’t even exactly say exactly why I chose running. I used to hate running, at least any distance longer than 400 meters. I once enjoyed running short distances (both with and without hurdles) but anything longer than one time around a track was something I only did with extreme difficulty and little enthusiasm.

I decided to become an athlete because I wanted to enter the next decade of my life at least working toward being the healthy and happy person that want to be. I also want to do this to encourage my family (genetic and otherwise) to make good choices for themselves, and in the case of my teenaged kids, to make a choice to stay healthy and active.

I know a lot of people around my age that have let themselves go, and I would love to be able to help them in some way to make those better choices and to work toward being what many of us aren’t, but would love to be, strong and healthy. I decided that I didn’t want to be that one in a thousand old fat guy that somehow still managed to live to a ripe old age, I want to be the trim, healthy guy that actively chose to try and be around to see his kids and grand-kids grow up and to be a part of their lives.

Now onto the reason behind deciding to start a blog. In part I wanted to hold myself accountable for my improvements, but mostly I wanted a way to share all of the interesting stuff that I happened to pick up and the neat toys that I found out about along the way.

I will be reviewing and no doubt recommending some of the things that I happen across, but I assure you that any review I do I will give you my honest opinion. If I don’t like something I will say so. Likewise, I will only recommend something that I think highly of; either from personal use or extensive research.