JOG WITH THE VEGAN KING #1

I Started running when I was in my mid 20's. I couldn't believe what I had just discovered. It was like finding a treasure, except it wasn't gold. It was health and self empowerment. It all started because I wanted to lose some weight. I remember I couldn't even run 1 mile. I always thought that people are not supposed to run a mile, because that would be insanity. eventually I noticed I was running further and further. Until one day I ran my first mile. I felt liberated. Like I just learned a great life secret that noone knew about. None of my friends or family members were runners so I never really had any exposure to running. The only thing my friends and I ever did as kids was smoke weed and play basketball everyday. I wasn't the best player. In fact I was terrible. But not when it came to running. I was great at running. I fell in love with it right away.

In my early running years my goal was to see how many miles I could run in 1 year. I think I got up to 500 miles one year. Eventually my goal went from miles per year to how many miles could I run in one clip. I peaked at 10 miles. I was so proud of myself going out

4-5 times a week doing 7-10mile runs each time. Not sure why I never strived to go further. Who knows? Maybe life started demandi

ng more attention from me than I could handle. I was young, pursuing a rap career and I had a full time job. I was married with kids and completely overwhelmed.

Eventually I had a career ending accident that set me back about 8yrs. Those 8yrs were some of the lowest and darkest moments in my life. I'm happy to say that those dark times are behind me now and here I am finding my glory all over again 20yrs later. I feel blessed. There's nothing like running. There's 2 things that always stand out to me when it comes running. The first is when I read somewhere in a magazine that boxing is a very lonely sport because running is such an extensive part of training. And when you're out there running it's just you and your thoughts agains the world. The second thing , and this is my favorite. One time and old timer at the gym saw that I was into running. He came up to me and said. "keep it up. If you can fall in love with running you will be ok for thr rest of your life". I never forgot those words.