Spotlight on the Camper: Karen “Kayron” Hodgdon

Karen HodgdonKaren is a native to Atlanta; and she grew up in the same neigh­bor­hood as Andy Abend! She went to Cham­blee High School, then UGA for two years in Fine Art, and then trans­ferred to Geor­gia Tech for her under­grad­u­ate and Mas­ters degrees in Archi­tec­ture. She lives in Can­dler Park in a condo that she has owned for almost 11 years.

Out­side of boot camp, Karen is a res­i­den­tial archi­tect. She has been doing res­i­den­tial work for 8.5 years. Before that, she did a lot of loft con­do­mini­ums. Karen works for a VERY small firm in Mid­town (just 2 peo­ple) and she has been work­ing on a lot of sum­mer homes – mostly new homes in North Georgia.

Karen has two big black Labradors that are almost three, so they take up a lot of her time. She likes to take them walk­ing around the neighborhood.

Karen started run­ning in 2005, doing the run/walk method (run 3 min­utes, walk 1 minute), which was a big step for her because she had never even run a mile before. She ran her first marathon in 2006. Karen enjoys doing half marathons now – she believes that it’s a much more man­age­able distance.

Karen started boot camp for the over­all full-body work­out. Run­ning is great for car­dio and legs, but it doesn’t do very much for your arms and tummy. Boot camp def­i­nitely helps her run­ning, and her over­all fit­ness and core.

Karen’s ini­tial goals for join­ing boot camp were to lose some weight and to tone up. She also wanted to get faster at run­ning. She still wants to do all of those things, and she’s well on her way! Karen keeps com­ing back because she loves the vari­ety of the work­outs and the cama­raderie of the BC4C boot campers and trainers.

Karen’s biggest diet chal­lenge is cheese, more specif­i­cally cheese dip. It is her neme­sis, arch­en­emy and best friend — all at the same time. She can’t say no to it. Karen is going to try and give up cheese for Lent.

Karen’s biggest fit­ness accom­plish­ment was when she ran the New York Marathon in 2007 (she saw Andy Waters at Mile 22!) and shaved 20 min­utes off her pre­vi­ous marathon time. She attrib­utes that com­pletely to reg­u­larly attend­ing boot camp the four months prior to that race.

KAREN’S FUN FACTS

Favorite exer­cise: 
sit-ups

Favorite work­out:
 Spare Change and the dice rolling game. She likes any­thing with props.

Advice for new boot campers:
 Just to get up and go. The hard­est part is get­ting out of bed. Once you’re in the park­ing lot, you’ll always be glad you showed up.

The best thing a trainer has done for Karen:
 She likes when a trainer does an exer­cise with her – like when Lau­ren jumped in and helped her get through her burpees the other day. It keeps her hon­est with her­self and even if she’s last, at least she has company!

Did you know?
 Karen is half-Canadian. She also lived in Paris for a year in college.

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