Getting people off the couch isn't easy. If it were, our rates of physical activity wouldn't be as dismal as they are. In case you need reminding, more than 50 per cent of us don't manage the modest 150 to 300 minutes of moderate exercise a week recommended by Australia's Physical Activity Guidelines.
Yet over the last 12 years, Can Too, the organisation that raises funds for cancer research has got thousands of people to not only start moving more but to amaze themselves at how far they can move in long distance runs and ocean swims.
It's like there's some alchemy at work that turns non-runners into triathletes and overweight under-exercisers into confident runners.
The secret is starting with baby steps, says Can Too's founder Annie Crawford, who has helped coax thousands of newbie runners across the finishing line.
"We're not boot camp. We tell people 'we believe in you until you start believing in yourself'. We also help them let go of the idea that you have to enjoy every step of the way – training is challenging."
Professional training helps too – for running events, this means two sessions a week to build endurance as well as strength to help prevent injury.
Crawford is a rich mine of stories of people who have done things they once thought impossible. The man who struggled to run 400 metres and went on to become an iron man; the middle aged man, 35 kilograms overweight, who has now completed 12 marathons; the woman who burst into tears in an 18-kilometre training run because she couldn't believe she was doing it – all her life she'd been told she was hopeless at sport.
This transformative effect is the icing on the cake of finishing an event. "I could never do that" becomes "I just did that" and with that can come "I can do anything".
"People can carry a lot of negative thinking about what they can't do. But when you realise that you can transform in one way you start thinking you can transform in other ways," says Crawford, whose memoir The Annie Effect tells about the experiences that lead her to create Can Too.
Crawford crossed a finishing line off her own back in 2002, completing her first marathon in just under four hours. Then came the idea for a not-for-profit program that would kick two goals at once: help people to get fitter and reap the health benefits that go with it, as well as raise funds for cancer research. Since then Can Too has trained 13, 500 people and raised over $17 million – enough to fund 147 cancer researchers.
Still, as challenges go, committing to train for a 10-kilometre run or a half marathon seems tame compared to a long-distance ocean swim. Not much can go wrong putting one foot in front of another on solid ground, but swimming one or two kilometres in an ocean race like the Cole Classic is something else. Rips, sharks and big waves come to mind. Yet with Can Too, hundreds of fearful swimmers have stuck with the training and done it.
"There are women who cry and men who make the sign of the cross at the ocean swim training sessions and it can take weeks for people to overcome their fear. Even just getting to the point where they can put their heads under the waves can take time. I'd say that the vast majority of people who do our swimming program are terrified at first," Crawford says, recalling one frightened woman who has since completed two 10-kilometre swims.
For many people who sign up to train for an event and commit to raising funds, the motivation is cancer – usually someone else's.
"Often people do it because someone close to them has cancer," says Crawford whose own father died of bowel cancer at 51. "They have a feeling of helplessness but this is a way to feel that you're doing something positive."
Places are still available for Can Too's training programs for the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon and Melbourne's Great Ocean Road Half Marathon.
There are also options for 14 and seven-kilometre runs.
The Annie Effect by Annie Crawford is published by New Holland, RRP $29.95