Team | KidRunner ambassador, Amber Williamson generously shares her story of parenting, fitness and courage. It is experiences like Amber's that inspired us to invent a completely new and better jogging stroller.
"Fitness has always been really important to us from dancing and cheering in school to going to the gym as young adults but it got a lot more serious after our dad died from a heart attack at the age of 50. We knew we needed to get more serious about working out and eating healthy.
It wasn’t going to be easy being a single mom to boys one being medically fragile. So we did what any person would do. We got accountability. We signed up for a fitness competition 7 months out. We worked really hard and ended up taking 4th and 5th place. We thought this was the first of many but after that competition Ben (the medically fragile son) had a really bad seizure and seizure became more frequent. It was harder to find a gym that was able to meet his needs. We weren’t going to let this stop us. We started to look into workouts we could do with the boys. Running kept coming up but we weren't runners. Finally we gave in and started running. Once again we needed accountability so we signed up for a race. One of the first races I wanted to stop so bad but that day was a really hard day for Ben. He ended up seizing longer than the race was going to be. It was all the motivation I needed.
Running with the boys is something I really looked forward to. Knowing Ben was fighting so hard made me want to work harder; doing more each run. When we ran Ben would laugh out loud his smile in the wind is just amazing. I would have to bribe the other son, Bentley. He didn’t like it at all. He hated not being able to see me in the stroller and it was really hard for him to hear me. He would end up crying telling me to stop yelling at him. I was only yelling so he could hear me. I would end up leaving him with my mom so I could go running because it wasn’t worth the fight.
I ended up at a race and saw the KidRunner. I knew I needed one. I wanted to try it and knew it could be the the answer I was looking for. The first time I was able to get him in a KidRunner to try it out he wasn’t having it. I got so discouraged. After sitting next to it for 10 minutes he finally wanted to go in. After he got in he loved it. I couldn’t get him out. It went from me bribing him to go running with me, to him asking me when we are running again.
He was so much more comfortable being able to see me. We could talk during our run without yelling. I didn’t realize how much he wanted to talk during runs until we could talk without yelling. For this I really love the KidRunner. I could workout with the boys and everyone was happy, but I got a whole new appreciation for the KidRunner when I was running down a hill and ate the concrete. I was running in a race on a course I didn’t know. When I got up all I saw was the river. It took a minute to take it all in. If Bentley was in a stroller he would of ended up in the river. I’m so thankful he was in the KidRunner still sleeping he didn’t even know anything happen. When I was done with the race I got to hold him and didn’t let go."