The American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery Foundation and the Obesity Action Coalition partnered to create a walk to raise funds for obesity research and education. The second annual Ark-La-Tex Walk from Obesity was held at Betty Virginia Park in Shreveport, LA on Saturday, October 20th.

“We want to build a community of people first and expand the view of obesity,” sponsoring physican George Merriman said. “We want it to be a fundraising walk, but we also want it to be a place for information if they are struggling with obesity themselves.”

Seventy similar walks are held across the nation to fight obesity by the sponsoring organizations. The Ark-La-Tex walk anticipated an even better participant rate this year than last year.

“We started the walk last year and we did well,” said walk chairperson Katy Merriman. “We were awarded sixth-best walk out of 72 cities and we raised more than $24,000 in sponsorship or donations. We had more than 200 people involved and this year we would like to see more.”

Source: The Shreveport Times

Dr. Alan Brock, founder of the Austin, Texas based non-profit Fit2Endure completed an amazing 40-day, 896-mile run this past summer. He did this to raise funds and bring awareness to the national child obesity epidemic.

His trek began in Austin, TX on July 11th. He ran across the state of Texas going northwest through Abilene, Lubbock, Amarillo and many small towns in between. A short leg through the Oklahoma panhandle and he was into Colorado. As if running across the 2nd largest state in the union wasn’t enough, he ended his amazing journey by completing the Pike’s Peak Marathon in Denver on August 19.

All along the way Brock was followed by a support crew, was cheered on by spectators and even found time for some TV interviews and a daily blog.

Alan Brock is not a man to stop either! Now he’s getting ready for a 100 mile trail run in Bandera, Tx in November. You can read more about his 896 run and his current training on his Summit40 Blog.