There are those moment-of-truth junctures in life when you can’t ignore the path you’re on. You need to change things. You need to reach for the reset button. Chris Andrews ran into his last February. Andrews, a San Diego resident who weighed 310 pounds, thought had had picked up a cold that was going around. Then he felt strange, sharp pains in his chest. “I noticed I’d have to stop every 20, 30 yards and catch my breath,” said Andrews, now 37. “After a day and a half of that, my bosses convinced me to get it checked out.” Doctors found 90% blockage in one of his arteries. They inserted two stents. “They said I had a heart attack about a week earlier,” Andrews said. “I definitely broke down when the doctor told me, ‘You could have died.’ There was fear and this anger that I couldn’t prevent this. Now I had to stop from making it worse.” A moment of truth. Three days later, Andrews started walking in Balboa Park. Later, he began signing up for 5Ks. And on Sunday, less than a year after the heart attack, he will ramp up his distance in the Carlsbad Half Marathon. “I had this determination of, I can’t go back. I have to go forward,” he said. “And if I’m going to go forward, I’ve got to give this everything I’ve got.” In a year, Andrews lost 50 pounds He now weighs 265. It came to reality one step at a time. “I started with that walk and then I went back to the gym the following Monday and went slow with the treadmill and elliptical,” he said. “Then I did more of the fun runs. I had signed up for the St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Run (in Pacific Beach) a week and half after getting out of the hospital. “I asked doctors and they initially were like, ‘Don’t. But if you really want to, walk it.’ I tried to jog some of the downhill portions and didn’t end up feeling terrible.” Andrews finished the three-race circuit in Pacific Beach, running the PB 5K and Santa Run to collect the Run PB Challenge medal. He also competed in the Navy Bay Bridge Run that crossed into Coronado. He was all in. “I had more grit and determination than I’ve ever had, not just to be healthier, but to stick with it,” he said. That also meant Andrews needed to massively re-work his diet. “Red meat, I really don’t eat anymore,” he said. “Fried foods are pretty much off the table. Now it’s a lot more fruit and veggies. I try to stick with lean meats, like chicken. Turkey burgers in place of regular burgers. I eat a lot more rice and healthier carbs. “And I stopped drinking. I’ve been sober a little more than a year now.” The clearest motivation? “What makes it easier is the knowledge of what will happen if I don’t,” Andrews said. “It makes the idea of eating junk food not so appealing anymore.” Andrews represents many who have been pushed into a medical corner and forced to make decisions that would reverberate through their lives. He had to answer questions that those in sports face at all levels, from weekend warriors to professionals. Can you change things? Can you be committed enough? Do you have what it takes? It all started as a blur. “It was a lot of jumbled thoughts at the time,” Andrews said. “This was no longer a possibility, but a reality. At the start of the year, when I’d hit my highest weight, I was like, ‘OK, I need to lose weight.’ “Health issues are going to start popping up if I don’t take this seriously. What if I have a heart attack? Now, the fear is a reality.” Sports is about finding and surpassing boundaries and limits. Running has a unique ability to test those sorts of things. It gauges head as much as heart. If you reach deep enough, you learn truths about yourself that had been buried within. Andrews is ready to unearth more in his first half marathon. “My goal is honestly simply to finish,” he said. “I think just being able to say I finished, this is one more thing you thought you couldn’t do, something you couldn’t dream of doing a year ago. And see where that feeling takes me.” To more finish lines, it seems. Carlsbad Marathon, Half Marathon and 5K When: Sunday. Marathon starts at 6:15 a.m., 5K starts at 6:40 a.m. and half marathon starts at 7:45 a.m. Course: Races start and finish at The Shoppes at Carlsbad, 2525 El Camino Real.