"I was a cow," Teresa Moore flatly said, but not in reference to how she looked 60 pounds ago, before fitness maven Denise Austin and the Peachtree Road Race helped the Fayetteville resident shrink from a size 16 to a 6.

"I was a size 6, 5-foot-1, 130-pound cow," she said proudly of a job she held two years ago as a costumed Chick-fil-A cow who danced on the side of the street, inviting motorists to stop into the restaurant. Now, the 39-year-old is a marketing director in the restaurant chain.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Teresa Moore of Fayetteville, shown with daughter Hannah, has lost 60 pounds in an exercise program that started with the 2005 Peachtree Road Race.

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It all began with a sales promotion for Dole fruit bowls, which offered a book by Austin for mailing in product labels. Moore followed Austin's instruction, which incorporated walking into the exercise. Soon after she was running, and at the suggestion of the wife of her pastor at Woolsey Baptist Church, entered the Peachtree in 2005.

Since, she has run three Peachtrees (her best time is just under 54 minutes), two marathons, countless 5Ks and 10Ks, and even triathlons. Last month, she ran a personal-best time (4 hours, 38 minutes) at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. She climbed Pike's Peak in Colorado last year.

Moore, who was in the top five percent academically at Griffin High School, never used to think of herself as a jock. "But I guess I am now. It makes me laugh to say that."

— Scott Bernarde