Sidney Stoker is running toward her goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon one centimeter at a time.
Earlier this month, the Utah resident created a “parody” Instagram account and declared that she would run one centimeter for every person that followed her.
“Honestly, the reason I started it was to make people laugh and it’s worked. It was only ever supposed to be a (fake Instagram) with like 500 followers max,” she tells TODAY.com in an email.
In just a few short weeks, Stoker’s following has skyrocketed to almost 189K and she has gradually increased her daily run to match the number of people following her fitness journey. At this follower count, she’s currently running about 1.2 miles a day.
The videos are comedic in nature, but Stoker says the intent behind them is 100% serious.
“Qualifying for the Boston arathon really is the ultimate goal! I know it’s hard to do. I have wanted to for a long time. I just have not put a lot of effort into running,” she says.
Having someone (or a couple hundred thousand people) hold you accountable on your fitness journey is always helpful. At the same time, Stoker is remaining realistic about what it will take to achieve her goals.
“I don’t think I could qualify for this year’s race, but if I could qualify for next year’s race, that would be amazing,” she says.
Stoker says she originally got the idea for the account when her sister and brother-in-law pointed out other social media accounts that have set goals for themselves (like drinking milk or doing pushups) and asked followers to help motivate them.
“All of the accounts they had showed me were men. So I decided ‘Hey, why can’t I do this?’” she says. “I work full-time as a staff accountant, so I figured I needed to do something I’d have time for just in case it blew up. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to blow up, but just in case.”
Stoker admits that her family was a bit skeptical when she first embarked on this adventure, but says…
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