A pic of Eric Wilder and Velvet.

http://www.ericwilder.com

An almost frightening report issued by the Centre for Global Energy Studies.

Bloomberg.com: Energy.

http://www.ericwilder.com

I ran track in high school and continued for a while during college.  When I returned from the Army I kept doing it.  As I got older my running was more like jogging but I kept it up – at least until the oil boom and bust of the late seventies, early eighties.  It was then that my weight ballooned past two hundred pounds.

This pattern continued and I did little or nothing to correct the situation.  By the time my little oil company went belly up, I weighed two hundred and forty pounds.  Fiscally broke and mentally broken, I languished through the days and nights, searching for motivation to open my eyes and get out of bed in the morning, and get off the couch during the day.

Anne and I took a trip to Vivian for a family reunion and one of my cousins filmed the affair.  During a question and answer session, he asked Anne what was the one thing that she wished for.

“I wish Eric would lose some weight and get his old spirit back.”

The words hurt but I knew that they were true.  Upon returning to Oklahoma City, I started jogging again.

I was grossly overweight and none of my running clothes fit me anymore.  We didn’t have a lot of money to buy togs that fit so I made due with a tee shirt and pair of cut-off blue jeans.  First I started walking laps through the house.

Eighty-five circuits through the kitchen, den and dining room equaled a mile, as best as I could determine.  I was soon walking a mile a day, and then two.  It was then that I took to the hard pavement.

Oil was selling for twelve dollars a barrel and no one was drilling for it or buying prospects.  I had drilling ideas but no one to sell them to.  The years that followed were bleak, but Anne and I managed to make ends meet – somehow.  Along the way, I got physically and mentally stronger.  I was running three to ten miles a day and my weight down to one-hundred-seventy pounds.

Oh yeah, I was going to tell you about running my first ten K.

It was the Quail Classic 10K in 1986.  By this time, Anne and I had lost our house to foreclosure and we were living in a rent house in Quail Creek.  Okay, not much of a come down for those of you that know Oklahoma City real estate.

I finished the race in about sixty-six minutes and everyone along the way was supportive.  This was much different than a few months before when a car filled with teens passed and yelled, “Don’t have a heart attack fatso.”

I kept running 10K’s, finally getting my time down to around fifty-one minutes.  I would always run alone on Memorial Day to remember and commemorate my fallen friends and comrades, and all the heroes that continue to battle cancer and other dread diseases everyday without a whimper.  I quit running when Anne lost her battle with cancer.

Late last year I made it back up to two hundred and forty pounds.  Since January I have cut my calorie intake drastically but I have only managed to drop down to two-seventeen.  Anne died ten years ago and I am finally finished grieving. 

Tomorrow I am going to start walking laps through the house and weekend after next – Memorial Day – I promise, as I live and breathe I’m going to run a mile on hard pavement to commemorate once again all of those that have gone before me.  I don’t know if my body will make it back down to one-seventy again, but I’ll bet my brain will be rejoicing.

http://www.ericwilder.com