Jamie Kerr topped out when she hit rock bottom.
“It was not a good marriage,” Kerr, now 36 and living in Cloquet with her three boys, said last week.
It bottomed out in June 2004 — though they tried repeatedly to make it work before divorcing in 2010. Kerr’s respite was food.
“One of the things I did to cope was to eat; I was an emotional eater,” she said.
And her emotions were irrepressible. She continued to seek comfort in food and her weight mushroomed to 255 pounds. Her marriage and her health in disrepair, Kerr said everything came to a crest that June, about 11 years ago.
She remembers thinking: “I can’t live like this anymore. Literally I was going to die from the way everything was emotionally, mentally and physically. Something had to change.”
Not long after, Kerr took her first steps toward a “better version of myself.”
A natural runner growing up “in the sticks” along the North Shore, as she described it, Kerr strayed from the sport when she had kids. So it was a chore in 2004 to get back into it, especially because of the extra weight clinging to her frame. She started with walking. Eventually, she picked up the pace. The feeling was freeing.
“I remember when I could start to run again,” Kerr said. “I was only able to do it for five minutes — and it was not fast — but I just remember how excited I was and how it made me feel.
“It made me feel alive again.”
She hasn’t stopped.
Today, Kerr is in taper mode. She’s six days out from the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon. Her running is much smoother these days.
That’s because Kerr has shed more than 100 pounds. She weighs about 145 now.
Also on the half-marathon course Saturday will be Duluth’s Steve Mattson, back for his seventh time but with a new approach to the race and beyond; and University of Wisconsin-Superior admissions counselor Sam Maday, whose diabetes diagnosis started him on the road to this, his first running race.
They, like so many others, have rallied around running in their quest for a healthier lifestyle.
Kerr: hard-headed transformation
Talk with Kerr for even a few minutes, and you get the impression that if she says she’s going to do something, it will get done. And done right.
Alina Granholm is dating Kerr’s brother, Josh. Granholm and Jamie Kerr first met in December when the latter moved to Cloquet from Indianapolis — where, in May 2014, she graduated in the top 6 percent of her class at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis while earning a bachelor’s degree in general studies. Granholm couldn’t believe how far Kerr had come since 2004.
In the photos Granholm saw, Kerr hardly looks like the same person.
“It’s an absolute transformation,” Granholm said. “It was a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication, and that’s what Jamie does. She put her mind to something, and the results have been tremendous.”
Wandruff, Kerr’s ex-husband, experienced much of the metamorphosis up close. Despite their difficulties as a couple, Kerr says they remain good friends.
“I watched her change from just a timid person who could accept and probably almost expect abuse from people in general to somebody who became the complete opposite and now is (standing up for herself),” said Wandruff, who lives in California. “She’s definitely turned into somebody I look up to and admire.”
Kerr and Wandruff divorced while they were living in Florida. She moved to Indianapolis for school, completing her degree while working full time and raising three children. Benjamin “Patrick” Wandruff is 15; Phillip Wandruff is 13; and Tristan Wandruff is 11.
Through it all, Kerr made time to run. She mixes in cross-training and weight-lifting, as well.
“I wish I had the amount of energy she has,” Granholm said. “She has a way of encouraging others through her actions.”
When she toes the half-marathon starting line Saturday near the Talmadge River, Kerr won’t be fixated on a goal time. She’s capable of maintaining about a 9-minute-per-mile pace, but that’s not what drives her. For her, pounding the pavement is liberating, a chance to clear the mental clutter.
“I get jittery now if I don’t run,” said Kerr, who works at Broadridge Financial Solutions in Canal Park. “To me, it’s a mental break and it’s a mental relief of everything that’s going on.
“I’m just there to run because I love to run.”
And because she can.
Mattson: more running, more energy
A new position at Essentia Health meant new stress for Steve Mattson. The Duluthian became Essentia’s vice president of quality last July. He turned 40 in October and visited his doctor in December. Mattson knew he had to make some changes.
The weight, like the stress, was mounting. Mattson felt lethargic, especially at night. Rather than give his undivided attention to his wife, Jenna, and their two daughters — 12-year-old Elaina and 10-year-old Saige — he simply wanted to dent the couch.
Mattson vowed to lose 40 pounds before he ran Saturday’s Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon.
“I was kind of letting things go since I took this position, and I could just feel things slipping,” he said. “The old poundage was kind of going up and I wasn’t feeling great — tired and at the end of the day just ready to go to bed. Just not feeling like all cylinders were firing.
“I wanted a healthier lifestyle, as well as to feel more alive than I was at that time.”
Mattson started training for his seventh Bjorklund in January. And he and his wife began preparing meals for the week on Sundays so that when schedules get hectic, they have healthy food pre-made. It helps to avoid the crutch of grabbing a pizza or eating out.
The colorful Mattson then elaborated on the food prep, his voice turning monotone — even somber.
“We’re a vegetarian family,” he said. “Well, my wife is a vegetarian, which makes my kids vegetarians, which makes me a vegetarian, even though I love meat.”
But it’s worked. Mattson has dropped about 23 pounds, going from 226 to 203. He won’t quite reach his goal by Saturday, but his training never has been better. He feels rejuvenated.
Mattson was talking at about 6 p.m. last week, normally about the time he’d start to hit the wall. The energy in his voice was unmistakable.
“It’s after 6 and I just got back from presenting at a leadership group, and I’m fired up, man,” he said. “I ran this morning and I could go running right now. The energy that I have at the end of the day has gone up immensely. And I think that’s really important when you expend so much energy and effort at work, that you still have enough gas in the tank for your family when you get home.”
Mattson hopes to run his first sub-2-hour half-marathon Saturday. His fastest time to date is a few seconds over 2 hours, 3 minutes. Jenna’s PR, on the other hand, is 1:58:03.
“He starts faster than me and I usually catch him and pass him and beat him by a couple minutes,” she says shortly after admitting, “I’m a little competitive.”
Last year’s race was the first time the two crossed the finish line together.
Jenna, 39 and a music teacher, is concerned, though, about Saturday. Her husband has trained smarter this spring.
“He might beat me this year!” she joked of her sixth Bjorklund half. “And I’ll be very proud of that.”
But …
“But if I can catch him and pass him, I will!”
Grandma’s weekend always has given Steve Mattson incentive to get in shape. After the race in years past, however, he’s reverted to old habits. This year, he says, he’s mindful of staying the course, finding another goal to home in on and adhering to the lifestyle changes he’s made over the past six months.
Aside from helping him get down near 200 pounds, running has provided a much-needed outlet.
“It is therapeutic in so many ways,” Mattson said. “It’s a time for me to unplug, disengage and be in my own head for an hour, two hours or whatever it is, and really find that space that you need to kind of balance life’s craziness with.”
Maday: Diabetes spurred first steps
His family history rife with diabetes, Sam Maday knew he was at risk of developing the disease. But when he checked his blood-sugar level one day in 2009, he was stunned to see a reading of 409. Normal is between 70-100. Blood can become toxic if it contains too much sugar.
Maday called the clinic at the urging of his mother. The nurse he spoke with asked Maday if we has sick, falling down or throwing up.
“At that point I must have been so conditioned to high blood-sugar that I was like, ‘No, I’m walking around fine,’ ” he recalled.
That, Maday says, “was a wake-up call.” He was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
The 29-year-old Maday grew up on the Bad River Indian Reservation in Odanah, Wis. He’s a 2004 graduate of Ashland High School and a 2010 graduate of Wisconsin-Superior.
He always was active in sports, though the positions he played didn’t emphasize much cardiovascular fitness. Maday was an offensive lineman in football, a heavyweight wrestler and a thrower in track and field. In fact, more bulk was a blessing in those pursuits.
Around the time his blood-sugar level skyrocketed, Maday weighed 289 pounds.
He didn’t, as he so bluntly puts it, want to become another statistic.
About six years later, Maday weighs 232 pounds and is prepping for his first running race of any kind, the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon. His “Mission: End Diabetes” Facebook page is a start toward urging people to adopt healthier habits to stave off the disease, the rate of which is significantly higher among Native Americans.
“There are too many Native fathers and sons dying because of unhealthy habits,” he said.
That includes Maday’s father, Stan Maday Sr., who died eight years ago at the age of 63.
Sam Maday has changed his own habits. He eats better and has morphed into an avid runner.
Both are surprising.
“I remember being proud of being an athlete and not having to run, and I could eat however much I wanted,” Maday said. “I remember wanting to impress people with how much I could eat, and now I realize how unhealthy that was.”
Maday’s blood-sugar level bounces between 150-200 these days. His goal Saturday is to run the entire 13.1 miles.
And he hopes to set an example along the way.
“If an offensive lineman, heavyweight wrestler and thrower — that’s, like, the most (unhealthy) athlete — can lose all this weight, get my diabetes (under control) and run a half-marathon, that could be some kind of inspiration for people,” Maday said.
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