How This Texas Dad Lost 100 Pounds Through Running – Runner’s World

About eight years ago, Ray Young was having coffee in the predawn hours when his then-15-year-old daughter Raegan came into the kitchen, already dressed for a run. Although she’d been on her school’s cross-country team for a couple of years, this was the first time she’d been told by her coach to start running in the morning before school.

The coach had provided the four-mile route, but she was expected to run it on her own. In the dark. On trails. Without any houses or buildings around.

“Not going to happen,” Young, 51, recalls saying. “But I didn’t want to tell her she couldn’t run at all, so I got my coat and grabbed my keys,” he told Runner’s World.

At about 275 pounds, the Denver City, Texas, resident knew he wasn’t in any shape to try to run alongside Raegan on the trails—and he admitted that he always hated running before that—so he drove slowly behind her for a couple of days. He progressed to walking to predetermined meeting points along the trail, and after a few weeks, he began running to them. He built his running distance up to a mile, as Raegan cheered alongside him.

“She was so encouraging, and telling me she was proud of me, and I did the same for her,” he said. “It became our time together, and we both really looked forward to it.”

They began running in the afternoons, as well, before Raegan’s cross-country practices, and when cross-country season ended in October, they kept going at least three to four times a week. Young was steadily losing weight, and feeling his endurance building up enough that he signed up for a local 5K in 2012—the Conquer Hunger 5K in Lubbock, Texas. Raegan ran it with him, staying by his side the entire time.

“It was incredible to do that together, and I was pretty slow, but I felt a sense of accomplishment,” he said. “Crossing the finish line together was something I never pictured that I’d ever do, and now we’ve crossed so many, and I know we have many more to come.”

But a month after that first 5K, Young experienced a major setback when he was in a motorcycle accident that left him in a wheelchair for months. There was even some doubt that he’d ever be able to walk again, at least not with assistance. But Young was determined to continue doing the activity he’d come to love.

The process of learning to walk—and then run—again was “brutal,” Young said. He underwent an intensive type of physical therapy called Advanced Muscle Integration Technique (AMIT) that helped speed up his recovery, and much like he did at the beginning of his running journey, he took it slow and steady. He was able to get back to running a mile by January 2013, and he and Raegan were determined to run the Conquer Hunger 5K again and cross the finish line together a second time. They did—and they even beat their previous time.

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“We have spent hours struggling together, especially after that accident, and when one of us was tired or unmotivated, the other one would work extra hard to be motivating,” he said. “It took a month after getting out of the wheelchair to get to the point where I didn’t feel like a disaster. But fortunately, I had Coach Raegan to get me through it.”

By the time Raegan graduated high school in 2014, Young had lost nearly 100 pounds and was running consistently. He continues to regularly run races with his daughter, and they even started a run streak—running at least a mile every single day—in November 2016 that’s still going strong, more than three years later.

They’re also not the only ones in the family lacing up. Young’s wife, Sonya, and other daughter Katelynn, began to join in on the training runs. In 2017, the whole family did the Dopey Challenge as part of the Disney Marathon Weekend—a 5K on Thursday, 10K on Friday, half marathon on Saturday, and marathon on Sunday.

That year, the half marathon was called off because of lightning, but the Young family couldn’t stand the thought of missing out, so they went anyway, getting soaked with rain but loving every moment because they were doing it together.

“We all blame Raegan for this—it’s her fault,” Young said. “This whole experience has strengthened us in every way in terms of health, mental attitude, and mostly in bringing us closer together.”

Elizabeth Millard is a freelance writer focusing on health, wellness, fitness, and food.