Hello and welcome back to Get Fit Guy. This is Kevin.

Last week, I received the following email from a lovely listener called Molly, who lives in Seattle.

Dear Get Fit Guy, I'm an overweight, BMI 30, mum, of two young children. After years of neglecting

my physical and mental health, I decided to sign up for some organised runs this year that

would force me to train and exercise. I followed a running plan and successfully completed a 5k in January,

a 10k in March, a half marathon in June, another 10K in August. Then because a friend of mine

asked me to, I signed up for an additional half marathon and completed it this month. While I'm proud of myself for

accomplishing my goal, I'm now reading more about running training plans, and apparently I'm

too slow for any of this to count. In order to successfully sustain jogging 200 pounds for a full 13 miles, my pace is slow, like 15

minutes a mile slow. I'm reading from various online running authorities that running for three

and a half hours, which is how long my first half marathon took me, has diminishing returns and is

too hard on the body. My second half

marathon, I shaved off nine minutes, ran it in three hours and 21, which is still shockingly long

to my thinner or fitter friends. My recovery is about three to five days of soreness,

then I'm back to lifting in short runs.

So I ask you, should I focus more on my diet and progressively heavier lifting, which I am doing, and long walks,

and stop trying to prove myself as a runner until I have less weight to carry around?

Or is a half marathon, a half marathon, and I should just keep at it.

Thank you for any advice. Well, hi, Molly. Thank you for the email. I've had to sit down and think

about this. One might say I've used some philosophical thinking skills. So maybe, first of all,

we're going to have a very super general run through some concepts

from morality and value, which you may want to consider.

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