Run the Highlands 5k was last weekend at Lake Highlands North Park.

Last weekend several hundred people participated in the Run the Highlands 5k, a fundraiser for the Lake Highlands Junior Women’s League.

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A couple of us from the Advocate did it and the rolling hills, gusty winds and unseasonable warm temps made for an especially challenging race.

Via the event, we learned about five Lake Highlands people who overcame big obstacles to run this 3.1 miler.

Danielle Girdano, a coach with D’fine training introduced us to Danielle Kennedy, Marta Ballesta, Ian Torok, Brenda Stowe and Denise Kuenstler (pictured in that order, left to right, above).

Kennedy is a mom who battled baby fat and depression before carving out some time for herself to lose weight and train for a 5k.

Ballesta’s lung-cancer surgery left her with only a small amount of her lung. Plus, she was obese and led a sedentary lifestyle for many years. The combined hurdles didn’t keep her from completing her goal of running, nonstop, the 5k.

Torok battled through knee injuries to become the group leader, Girdano says, while Stowe, age 62, hoped at the start of training to simply walk the 5k, but wound up running the whole thing.

Another of the group leaders, Kuenstler, was a busy working mom who never took time to focus on herself and got completely out of shape. She struggled, but like the rest of this tight knit training group, used the ten-week Run the Highlands preparation to lose pounds and gain physical health, strength, endurance and confidence.

(You can hear any of the participants talk about their journey toward fitness in videos on the D’fine Facebook page.)

“You know, I had someone ask me what I felt as we all crossed the finish line Saturday with all five of them and I couldn’t help but break down,” Girdano says.  “When you witness people go though this transition of ‘I can’t’ to ‘I just did’ … know how much dedication they developed through genuine hard work it’s hard to put into words. When each of them crossed they had a feeling of triumph. For so many people it was just another 5k on just another Saturday, but for them it was a feeling that can’t be manipulated, duplicated or faked … triumph over a course and your own fears and doubts is priceless and can only be earned … each one of them earned that feeling Saturday.”

Girdano started D’fine after her own personal weight loss journey that you can read about here.