We started the crowdsourcing inspiration blog series so users could share their motivation with the rest of the RunKeeper community. We’ve had a great initial response and continue to receive submissions. We’ll keep sharing stories with you as they come in.
For anyone trying to find the motivation to become healthier, more active and lose a bunch of weight doing so, here’s a fix of inspiration from a RunKeeper user in Minneapolis, MN named Lonnie…
Back in July of 2009, it occurred to me that it was time to do something about my weight. I heard a quote from Craig Groeschel, “Do Hard Things: It’s doing what we can do, to enable us to do tomorrow, what we can’t do today“. My hard things were exercising, eating right and running. I always hated running with a passion. Having a history of heart disease and high blood pressure in the family was a huge factor in deciding it was time to do something as well. Back in 2005, my dad had a sudden heart attack followed by an emergency five-way bypass. He’s doing well today, but I knew that I could greatly reduce my risk of ending up in the same boat if I dropped some weight and got back into shape.
The problem was that I was at my all time highest weight. I hadn’t looked at the scale in a while, but I was 294lbs the last time I had stepped on some time in July 2009. With the support of my amazing wife, it was time to put in hours, and hours of training.
I started with the popular Couch 2 5k program, and somewhere near week 4-5, I saw RunKeeper in the App store. I tried the free version for a day and shelled out the $10 for the pro version. I could tell it would be a huge motivator seeing the progress. I started last August somewhere around a 13:40 mile at about 300lbs. I completed Couch 2 5k and my first ever 5k race in 33:00 on October, 17 2009. Now, 1 year later I have run 2 half marathons (PR of 2:36:00), 4 5k races with a (PR of 25:10), a single mile test is down to 6:15, and I am down about 90lbs to 204-210 give or take a days water weight. My waist has went from 44-45″ to 33″. I once wore 3x t-shirts and now wear a medium-large. I’ve covered more than 1000 miles, burned more than 160,000 calories and spent more than 175hrs training.
It’s been a great year watching my own progress, as well as my Street Teammates. If I can offer any piece of advise to someone looking to lose weight and get back into shape: There’s no magic pill to it. You’ve got to put in hard work, be dedicated and willing to hurt once in a while. Don’t give up, push through the tough times and you will see results.
Thanks Lonnie!
We love to hear from RK community. What get’s you excited to go out for a run? Leave your comments, let us know what you think or submit a story you’d like to share!