among the thousands of people who ran the boston marathon monday was a man who just five years ago weighed 100 pounds more than he does now and could not run more than two minutes at a time andy bell of lewisberry pennsylvania completed the 262mile race in brutal conditions as the race began monday in hopkinton massachusetts the temperature was 40 degrees with a wind chill of 29 degrees and wind gusts reached 30 mph andy bell 45 poses with one of his daughters after completing a spartan race andy bell bells transformation from outofshape high school basketball coach to an athlete running in one of the worlds most exclusive marathons began with a simple 5k race on thanksgiving that he says his wife forced him to enter youtube stars who battled acne say they cleared skin through a lowfat diet doctor shares 20 foods you should be eating she wanted to run a local turkey trot bell 45 told abc news i thought it was the dumbest idea ever but she wanted to do it and signed us up bell a high school sociology teacher had just been to the doctor before his 40th birthday and was told he needed to take blood pressure medication and that he was on the fast track to diabetes he was a heart attack waiting to happen said bells wife heidi bell there was a realization that if things didnt change he wasnt going to be around for as long as we wanted him andy bell 45 is photographed before and after his 100pound weight loss andy bell at nearly 300 pounds andy bell decided he would run for 10 minutes on a treadmill at his high schools gym after basketball practice ended every day two minutes in the first 10minute run i had to hit the stop button he recalled there was a bench nearby and i sat down and just put my head in my hands and was crying he continued i could not believe it had gotten to this point i was only 39 years old andy bell decided to eliminate fried food and soda from his diet he kept running on the treadmill every day just aiming to run 30 seconds or one minute more than the day before andy bell who played multiple sports in high school completed the turkey trot and learned that he loved to run in high school running was always the punishment for doing what you werent supposed to do he said i was as surprised as anyone that i enjoyed how i felt not only after the run but during the run i just discovered i was at peace when i was running and it just fueled me to keep adding time said andy bell who does not listen to music when he runs focusing instead on his heartbeat his steps and the environment around him the more he ran the more weight he lost the more weight he lost he said