When I was in college, I ran DIII Track and Cross Country for a small upstate NY school. I wasn't an All American, but I was competitive. I weighed 140 lbs and I could run a mile in under 4:20.

Fast forward seven years. I still run, but not everyday. And I am not running 80+ miles a week anymore. I run maybe 5 miles a week right now and I weigh 213 lbs.

I am 29, so I think the window has closed on me running under 4:10 in a mile, which was an original life goal back in college. The window is probably closed on sub 4:30, too. But I would like to be able to run under 5:00 again. I miss being fast and I miss being in shape.

I was hoping that posting in this thread would increase my accountability for hitting fitness goals. I have a workout sheet that I am doing with some friends. It mainly tracks pushups and situps plus mileage. I originally had a goal of running 400 miles. I would like to crush this goal this year. I am not too worried about situps and pushups. I do those enough to hit my goal of 30,000 each this year (this averages out to 82ish per day).

The difficulty: I have 2 babies. One is 2 years old, the other is 7 months. Finding time to workout is difficult because of them. I run on the treadmill mainly now so I can watch them while they are sleeping. Once the snow melts, I plan on running outside again, while my wife watches the kids.

I had set my weight loss goal to get down to 175 by the end of the year. I think this is doable. I have gained a lot of muscle since I stopped running 80+ miles per week since I lifted quite a bit for a few years. But I don't think 140 is ever going to happen. So for now, the goal sits at 175. Once I hit this, I will reevaluate.

My mile goal was sub 6:00 by the end of the year. I am not sure how realistic this is, as my top mile last year was just a touch under 8:00. But that's the goal. It will certainly be easier when I am not over 200 lbs like I was for the 8 minute mile.

I welcome all comments, encouragement, questions, and taunting. I don't think I will update this thread daily, but I will at least every other day plus update my weight at least once a week.

height?

5'11''

Did an early morning weigh in today. 211.4 lbs. I started the year at 218.2, just for a point of reference.

My run yesterday never happened. By the time the kids fell asleep last night, I was way too sleepy. Lame excuse, I know. But I will try and get at least one mile in today.

Good workout today. Ran 1.3 miles on the treadmill and used the punching bag for a bit to work on toning the upper body. 105 pushups and 200 crunches. My mileage tracker on the treadmill is not working, so I just erred on the side of caution and said I was running 10 minute pace. I'm generally around 9:15-9:30 when I run on the roads, so I think this was a safe assumption.

I need to work on eating better. I don't eat nearly enough vegetables and I had leftover pizza for breakfast. I really need to discipline myself in this area.

Running sub 6 mins will take some work but definitely doable. I had the exact same goal a few years ago and ended up doing it comfortably and I was 40 yrs old with a similar running history as yours. I ended up weighing under 155 lbs and got the running bug in a big way. Ran 2 marathons but w 2 little onesi couldn't invest so much tim

Time (obv). Now I'm trying to gain that weight back because I was too thin. GL keep us posted.

Weighed in at 211.2 lbs today. Not a lot of progress, but it's still lost weight. I'll take it. Hoping to go for a run on the treadmill tonight. I would rather run outside though...

HIIT might be good. It's a great way to improve fitness and it only takes 10-15 minutes to do a solid HIIT workout, which might be a plus when you've got to schedule around kids.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, what is HIIT?

High Intensity Interval Training

There's a lot of information in the internet about it. Basically, it's a short workout where you cycle between brief periods of high intensity and low intensity.

There's lots of ways to go about it. Personally, I usually just do 30 seconds of sprinting followed by 30 seconds of slow jogging for 8-10 minutes.

HIIT is meant to kick your ass, speed up your metabolism and get you into good shape quick. The best part is that there isn't much time required to get a good workout from it.

Obviously, balance is needed in any exercise routine, but I'd definitely recommend mixing in HIIT a few times a week. I do it on days I have lots of classes and don't really have the time to allocate toward a 60-90 minute workout.

There's a lot of biochemistry behind it that I don't feel like getting into, but as I said there's lots of good information out there on the internet about it.

Kind of like a fartlek run? Where you run hard for a short time followed by a short time of jogging? In college we did those once or twice a month just to vary our training. Fartlek is Swedish (I think) for speed play. If we are talking about the same thing, it is a really tough workout--I will definitely be plugging these into my workout schedule soon.

I wanted to add that over the past summer I had my long run up to 7.5 miles. I increased way too quickly though, and ended up hurting my knee. So I took some time off and now I am really cautious of increasing my mileage too quickly. I think the injury came because of carrying too much weight. The moral of this is that I don't want to put hard runs into my schedule until I've lost a bunch of weight. I really like the concept of HIIT, but I am planning on waiting until I'm under 200 lbs before I start this.

What college?

There's also a lot of BS out there on the internet. I'm also interested in learning more about HIIT, please post the "good information" or PM it to me, that way I don't have to sift through the bad.

SUNY Geneseo. A small state school in upstate New York. DIII.