Most runners would faint at the thought of running in anything more restrictive than a T-shirt, shorts and jogging
shoes. But if they do, Sister Andrea Lacosta will be there to give them consolation. She runs two miles five
times a week- in her nun’s habit.
At 59, Sister Andrea of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent dePaul seems an unlikely candidate to join the throngs
of people who have taken to the track to improve their health. It took a life-sized photograph of her 5-foot-l,
171-pound body flashed upon the wall at a meeting of volunteers for the St. Paul Hospital fitness fair for her to
realize how overweight she had become.
Although she works as a management analyst at St. Paul Hospital, Sister Andrea is a registered nurse, so she knew the
importance of going on a medically sound diet. She turned to Dr. L.G. Thompson, a bariatric physician who deals
only with obesity, and lost 40 pounds in four months. “It took me a year to take off the rest,” she says, but now
she’s at a trim 118 pounds.
She began jogging last October to increase her energy level and to work off stress, in addition to losing weight. She
doesn’t think twice about wearing her habit while she runs, since she wears it all the time anyway. She has added
radio headphones to her running gear and likes to listen to “peppy” music on KOAX or KVIL.
Sister Andrea is as careful about running as she is with her diet and has taken to reading running books by Dr.
George Sheehan, who looks at exercise from a spiritual viewpoint. Sister Andrea has subscribed to Runner’s
World, and she invested $35 in a pair of running shoes, which, she says, put a crunch on her finances. “I got
commitment that way. If I was going to put that much money in shoes, I was going to do something about it.”
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