For some of these yearly backpacking trips, I became pretty serious about getting in shape. For multiple mornings a week I would run back and forth on a paved road near my house along Utah Lake. I progressed to the point where I was running four miles in about 32 minutes. I was pretty proud of that, but after each backpacking trip, I would fall back to lazy life. I didn’t really enjoy these pavement runs and I still had a problem in that I kept competing with the watch, trying to beat my times. It became harder and more painful. Another reason I would quit was because of illness. Back in those days with bad fitness, I would get frequent colds and that was an excuse to quit.
But one year, in 2002, something was very different. Perhaps it was the realization that I was starting to feel old. I was 43, between 220-230 pounds and would watch my kids run around in the back yard playing with my fit brother-in-law Ed. I couldn’t really join in if I wanted to. I was too heavy and out of shape to jump on our trampoline like I used to. As far as basketball goes, I could no longer even jump and touch the bottom of the net. Back in my early 20s I could come close to dunking a basketball. I kept trying to touch that net, but just couldn’t. It was depressing. When I tried to play basketball, I would quickly get injured and now in my 40s, it took much longer to heal. So I gave up basketball. Was this it? Was it all downhill for the years to come?