#thegrizzlyrunner

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My morning was pretty successful a nice easy 6 miler. The 600 feet of gain on mile three is a killer, super steep super technical but really fun.

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Nausea special 2 for 1 today. Who turned the heat back on?!?!? 😓😅

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Slow long run, half roads half trails. Tried a new trail today ended up being the rockiest trail I've ever run on had to rock hop the whole time.

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Gulf beach half marathon 9-17-16 new PR 1:51:41 not too shabby. Came in 4th in my age group.

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Steep and technical trail run 500+ feet of elevation gain within .2 miles during mile 3.

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The Grizzly Runner

My name is Eric and this is a blog to document my ultra running journey. On February 18th, 2016 I woke up, it was my birthday I turned 24. As I made my way to the bathroom that morning my body ached. I stepped on the scale and to my dismay the black numbers stared back into my soul as if I just saw a ten car pile up on the highway. The scale read 295lbs. I stepped off and looked into the mirror in disgust. I was almost over 300 pounds for the second time in my life. In high school I weighed my largest at a whooping 325 pounds. I worked so hard to get my weight down to 275. It had taken me years, and on that cold February morning I realized I was on a fast track back to 325. I went on to my back porch and pulled out a pack of neon green Marlboro Menthols from my sweatpants and lit one up. I had been a smoker for almost 10 years of my life at that point. My morning cigarette was used as a time of contemplation and on this day I knew I had to change. Two months prior I had quite a scary incident when I had really bad gastrointestinal problems and I had to get a colonoscopy at 23 years old! Thank god nothing was too bad, what the doctors thought may be Crohn’s disease tuned out to be just a bad case of IBS. All of the factors: IBS, smoking, and my weight issues made me realize it was time to change my life. On February 19th, 2016 my life changed for the better. I started off by quitting smoking. Then, on March 1st once I finally took control of my cigarette addiction I started dieting and decided to take up running to lose the weight. As the months went on and the pounds started to shed, I started to realize that running was so much more to me than an outlet for weight loss, it had became a lifestyle. Since that day I am now down to 225 and I have run two half marathons and signed up for my first marathon and my first ultra. Please feel free to follow my journey into ultra running and beyond. -Thegrizzlyrunner