Team!
Loni Boyum is a hard-working mom with a passion for fitness. Learn how she stays healthy while juggling family life.
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Name: Loni Boyum
Age: 40
State: Shippensburg, PA
What’s your favorite way to stay active? I love to run! Whether in a group, with my daughter, or by myself – or even with my dog – there is nothing I enjoy more!
What charities do you like to support with Charity Miles? I mostly support the ASPCA, charity: water, and Team RWB
Where is your favorite place to walk, run or bike? I enjoy running on the road. I think you really get to see the sights of a place by running through it.
Where is one place you’d most like to walk, run or bike that you haven’t yet? The Las Vegas Strip!
What do you do to help your family/community get active? I am the chairperson for our local Women’s Network’s Health & Fitness Committee. This past year, I organized an “Amazing Race”, that had teams of up to 10 women “racing” one another from one site to another – over 1100 miles – using step tracking. We had over 300 women participate!
Do you have any tips for others on how to take steps toward improving their well-being? The best thing I can recommend is to just run the mile you are in. Any time that you have a challenge to overcome, just focus on the piece that is right in from of you. Before you know it, you’ll be miles from where you started and well on your way!
What’s your favorite workout song? Uma Thurman by Fallout Boy
Are you training for anything? I am training for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, and the Cape Cod Ragnar, and then, in May, I’ll start training for my 5th year running the Twin Cities Marathon.
What are your health and fitness goals? My goal is to lead the kind of healthy lifestyle that I would want my kids to pattern themselves after. I hope to complete a sprint distance triathlon sometime in the next few years.
Do you have any favorite healthy recipes you can share? I make a mean white bean, chicken chili.
What is one thing that Humana can do to help you live a healthier lifestyle? Perhaps subsidize gym memberships or the cost of treadmills and the like, to help keep up the activity level in the cold and icy months.
What’s the best health advice you have ever received? Your body hears everything your mind says, so never tell it that it can’t do anything.
Humana believes that everyone has a unique health and well-being story. What is yours? I am a full-time working mom to two kids. I have a 14-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. I just turned 40, earlier this year, and am loving the view from “this side” of the hill, so far. I ran track in high school. I sort of let my athletic pursuits wane through my 20s and most of my 30s as I was really busy trying to figure out all of the finer points of “adulting”. In the pursuit of becoming a “real grownup”, who was “in control” of their life, I, unfortunately, developed an eating disorder.
Fast forward to 2011, and I decided it was time to grab the reins of my life and really take control. This time, instead of punishing my body, by depriving it of food, I re-engaged my athleticism and started running again. I started with a Couch to 5K program and then decided to keep going. I ran my first full marathon in October of 2012 and haven’t stopped running since!!
Through my runs, I am able to pattern the kinds of healthy behaviors and work ethic that I want my children to internalize. They are able to see that no dream is too big, as long as you commit to chasing it, but at the same time, if you aren’t enjoying the pursuit of your goal…if it doesn’t make you really, truly, exquisitely happy?
Maybe it isn’t the right dream for you. I try to live a life that is equal parts hard work and belly laughs and look to infuse whimsy wherever I go. I’m a serious runner that refuses to take myself too seriously! I want nothing more than to help spread the joy that running brings to me, and to others, so I started a virtual running club, to give others a place to get the encouragement, advice, and “atta boy” and “atta girls” that they sometimes need. I love what the Charity Miles program brings to the table, by giving every runner the ability to use their abilities to do for others!