What’s your excuse? Don McGinty shares what got him started 30 years ago!
Meet Don McGinty. He’s 78 and has been running for over 30 years. In 1970 he was setting up his practice here in Atlanta and realized he weighed more than he liked. Sound familiar? At 200 pounds he realized he needed to do something so that he was not only healthier, but that also helped with the stress so setting up his practice. So, he started running. One foot in front of the other even on the days when he came from work exhausted. His wife encouraged him too! “If it looked like I wasn’t going to she said get out there and run because I was much easier to live with after I came home.”
Now 30 years later Don has run 100 marathons including the New York City Marathon, his first in 1983, the Boston Marathon, and London among others. Now that he’s 78 he still stays active even though he’s not running marathons anymore and says that it’s not the number that’s important, it’s how you feel when you’re done running. “If you’re positive about it, it makes it so much better. But in the longer runs you go through periods when you have a downer, but mentally if you say ‘I’m going to do this’ you just get through and feel great in a few minutes.”
We can all relate to Don’s story! Often we come home tired, or we aren’t happy with our weight, but if we just think about what we can do we can conquer the excuses that hold us back. Check out our What’s Your Excuse page and join the community of runners and walkers working towards their goals of becoming more active! So, tell us, what’s your excuse?
