From two packs a day to a marathon

Carl Johnson was once truly living the unhealthy life. But then he made a 180° turn and now is working with a laser focus on marathons. We discuss his transformation.

TAMAR:
Hey, everybody, I am super excited to introduce Carl Johnson. I met him in a really interesting for him and I’m going to introduce that first just because I’ve been kind of really compelled by this story and in meeting some amazing people. I met him on Facebook through the David Goggins community. David Goggins is a Navy Seal, retired now, I believe, he has a book called Can’t Hurt Me. And it’s literally the scariest thing that you might ever read. In some ways. There’s some things there that you just don’t ever want to, I guess, ever want to read. But like, it’s this guy who basically has done these insane, insurmountable human feats. And yet, he’s been able to do them, like running a marathon on broken legs kind of things. So there’s a community of followers. And that’s where I met Carl. And so thank you so much for coming and joining us.

Carl Johnson:
Oh, no problem at all. How are you doing today?

TAMAR:
I’m doing all right. I’m surviving. We’re trying to make do, 2021, trying to make it all happen. Where are you in the planet? Tell me what you what you do, what you’re up to, how you’re surviving? How are you doing?

Carl Johnson:
I am in Baltimore, Maryland. I am a bower general.  I’ve been there for a long, long time. Now, I am a store manager.

TAMAR:
I don’t know if you have a crazy career story. But it’s not always it’s not always the main focus of the podcast. Of course. I think a lot of us, especially in the, you know, the David Goggins community, have these stories where we’ve have overcome insane adversity. I mean, in David’s story, he has multiple elements of that. That was really kind of like, if you will, the criteria of where I was coming from in recruiting you for the podcast. So tell me a little bit about your story on that front, if you unless it was something else. I don’t know that it was necessarily overcoming adversity, but it was, it was making a major lifestyle change later than a lot of people make it.

Carl Johnson:
When I was 51 years old, I’m I’m 57. Right now, when I was 51 years old, I weighed almost 270 pounds, I was smoking two packs a day, and I was I was headed for an early hole in the ground. I went to a grocery store one day, and when a when they had one of those Do It Yourself blood pressure monitors. So when uh, when I, you know, tested myself, and I was right, you know, it says different levels. You know, the first level is you’re fine. The second level is today, you’re a little tired for a little concern here. And third level is is, you know, you you should you need to see a doctor and get on medication. The fourth level is is you need to go to the emergency room. I was at the third level. At that point, that was that was in in August, I came to the conclusion that I was going to quit smoking and you set a date. That’s the best way to do it. You tell everybody you set a date. And that’s what I did. And when September 1, I quit smoking. two packs a day cold turkey. No, no, no, no patch no nothing. I’m about two weeks later the stress was just getting to the if you know anybody’s quit smoking. It’s it’s not a fun experience. I wouldn’t wish
that two weeks later, I needed something to do to get you know, just work off the stress. It’s so I started running. I’m still [doing it] to this day, I’m not sure why I started running but I did. My very first run I ran about a quarter mile and I seriously thought I was dying. I literally thought I was dying. For whatever the reason, I stuck with short runs every day, for the first first couple of weeks, and you go forward, you know to about 14 months later I ran my first marathon. So I went from two packs a day to running marathons I still run to this day. It’s something that I I can’t even imagine not being a runner at this point. So it wasn’t necessarily overcoming adversity, it was more of a major of dealing with transformation.

TAMAR:
And that’s always the story. The transformation story is a big focus. So that’s fantastic. I don’t think I could do that. It’s, it’s interesting, because I started running on December 24, 2018. And it was sort of the same thing. Like I tried to do it. Probably in September of 2018 I tried to do the couch to 5K [program]. And I was I was running too fast. And I became very, very—and this