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Articles

From January 4, 2007, Roanoke Times

A running start

After months of disciplined dieting and exercise, running buddies head for their payoff -- the 26.2-mile Walt Disney World Marathon.

By Marques G. Harper | 777-6494



Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Tricia Adams, Dustin Knuttgen and Jennifer Walker (from left) run a five-mile loop through Smith and Wasena parks in November. Adams later had to drop out of the trio's marathon plans.

Today, two Roanokers will be on their way to Orlando, Fla. One will fly, the other drive.

They will go to Walt Disney World.

Sounds like a vacation until you hear that on Sunday, they will rise at 3 a.m. to be at Epcot Center by 4 because the race starts at 6 a.m.

A 26.2-mile marathon, to be exact.

For Jennifer Walker and one of her running buddies, Dustin Knuttgen, the new year isn't about starting months of an exhausting exercise routine. It's about reaching the payoff after calorie counting, ice baths and miles on the asphalt.

Walker, 34, and Knuttgen, 38, will join about 16,000 runners who will kick off 2007 by running a marathon at the popular theme park. The event is part of a weekend at the park that includes a health and wellness expo and a half-marathon.

The two are sponsored by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and had to raise $3,330 each for the organization.

"Moving here and not exercising, I had gotten out of shape," Walker said on a recent morning in her downtown Roanoke office, Balance Chiropractic and Wellness. Speaking for her running partners, including her practice's massage therapist, Tricia Adams, Walker said, "We had all gotten out of shape."

Walker, a chiropractor, moved to Roanoke in early 2006 after selling her practice in Cape Cod, Mass. Patients here lamented about the difficulty of losing weight, so Walker -- who also wanted to drop a few pounds -- researched and created a boot camp-style exercise program last summer. Having a background in exercise physiology, Walker said she knew how dangerous extra pounds can be in slowing the healing of injuries.

During boot camp sessions, Walker gave participants guidelines and asked that they check in once a week and come in for a body fat analysis. She and her crew also incorporated running, doing a series of one-minute walks and one-minute runs. Those short runs led to their bigger challenge: training for a marathon and getting through a holiday season of parties without gaining back the 125 pounds that she, Adams and Knuttgen, who is one of Walker's patients, had collectively lost.

"I dragged them into it," Walker said.

"She got bored, and we followed along," Adams said.

But Walker's boredom in her exercise routine turned into new goals for the three amateur athletes.

"We were running five-mile runs," Walker said. "I had never gone beyond eight miles."

"We thought if Oprah can do a marathon ...," said Adams, 43, about the talk show host's 1994 run in the Marine Corps Marathon.

The trio trained for months indoors and outdoors depending on the weather.

They saved long runs for Saturday mornings and squeezed in several shorter runs during the week near the Roanoke River and the site where Victory Stadium once stood.

On a family visit to Florida in early November, Walker was ready to call it quits. She said she thought she was going to die in the heat and had what she described as "the worst run of my life." But she bounced back a week later and completed 16 miles without a problem.

There have been a couple of setbacks: Knuttgen has a recurring knee problem but is still running the big race, and Adams bailed out after missing three weeks of long runs.

Training for the marathon has been "another way to get through the holidays without gaining 50 pounds," said Knuttgen, a computer networking consultant who has tried diets including Atkins. Although he indulged in holiday treats, Knuttgen has slimmed down to 195 pounds from 240 .

"A lot of people didn't recognize me," he said. "People are just amazed and asked you what you did, and hopefully it's inspirational to somebody else."

He said he was motivated by training with a group. For their next goal, Knuttgen said he'd like the trio to work on shorter runs to improve their running time.

Meanwhile, the holiday season wasn't particularly challenging for Walker, who says she has a competitive streak and likely will continue running in the future.

"When I cheat I'm much more aware when I'm doing it," she said. "Before, the tendency was to eat and not be aware of it."

As a result of participating in her own boot camp, Walker lost 55 pounds and has kept much of it off. Much of the weight loss was through a strict diet that didn't allow for treats such as cocktails and bread.

"When I deviated from the diet I was so sick," Walker said of the holidays. "I didn't eat as much as I would have. Even with the small, little bits I ate, I wasn't happy. Coming into January I want to be a little more rigid with dieting to make myself feel better."

In recent days, Walker and Knuttgen, who both ran the Cox Communications Star City Half Marathon & 5K in November, have been tapering off the number of miles they run and focusing on their diets to prepare for Orlando.

In the home stretch, they will focus on making sure their bodies have the correct amount of carbohydrates to pull off the marathon in the hot Florida weather. Their goal is to complete the run in less than five hours.

"I feel great, surprisingly," Walker said. "I've been derailed so many times with fitness programs. I'm very surprised. I've been very lucky. I'm just very happy I survived training. You hear about so many people who get hurt. I'm really happy I've been able to finish."

Said Knuttgen: "If we can do it, anybody can."