We have already established that 11 words were the genesis for this adventure so like Paul Harvey would say, “here’s the rest of the story.”

I ran the Nashville Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in 2019. When I say I ran what I really mean is I lumbered through the course shuffleling like a zombie. In fact at mile 11 I was spent. I pretty much had to walk the enite last two miles. I think I ran out of nutrients but I also know that I didn’t train well enough. At mile 12, I said that I would never do this again. By the next morning I was signing up to run it again in 2020.

I decided to double down on the training and was making strides. I reran the Hot Chocolate 15k and cut considerable minutes of my time. Did I mention it was 23 degrees when it started? Everything was looking good for the race at the end of April. That was until the Covid-19 pandemic upended everything. Just like that the world shut down and the race was cancelled.

Most people took the next 12 months to get in shape and lose weight. I went the other direction and did whatever I wanted. Diet abandoned, running stopped, moderation gone.

A few weeks before the pandemic hit tragedy struck and a tornado hit Jeff’s house and it was leveled, destroying almost everything. 25 people were killed by these tornados but amazingly Jeff and his entire family walked away with no significant injuries. Similarly to me, Jeff threw moderation out the window and turned to the comforts of food.

David’s text would soon change all that. David was concerned for Jeff and while he didn’t say it, for me as well. We had both packed on the pounds and he knew that we needed to do something about it. David is a fitness trainer by profession and wanted to talk about how to get us back on track. I agreed with his thinking and suggested all of us running the 2022 half marathon together. It was far enough away that we would have enough time to train. It was hard enough to ensure we would actually train. All of three of us agreeing to do it would hold us all accountable. There was a cost associated which meant we had money actually invested. And it was something we could do independently at our own schedules and still come together for the race to finish together.

I had tried to talk Jeff into running a half with me before but I could never nail him down. I didn’t think it would be any easier this go round. But he was agreeable and within a few minutes we had all committed to seeing it through.

Finally, we needed to come up with a training plan. I decided to use the plan I used for my training and then modified it for our use. It called to start at the beginning of September and go for 33 weeks ending with the half on April 23, 2022 with options to run additional 5k and 15k races along the way that matched our progression.

The easy parts had been decided. Now it was time to put in the miles.