Clinics help women to run or walk a 5K

A group of about 85 women learn stretches during the first meeting of the Hot Springs Women Can Run Clinic at Transportation Depot on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. This is the 6th year for the clinic, which is held every spring in conjunction with the Women Can Run 5K in May. The clinic is a 10-week walking/running training program, in which women learn to run a 5K. The group meets every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:45 p.m. at Transportation Depot and free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.womenrunarkansas.net, email, wcrinfo@arspacer.com, or call Shelley Robinson at (501) 538-5680. (The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn)
A group of about 85 women learn stretches during the first meeting of the Hot Springs Women Can Run Clinic at Transportation Depot on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. This is the 6th year for the clinic, which is held every spring in conjunction with the Women Can Run 5K in May. The clinic is a 10-week walking/running training program, in which women learn to run a 5K. The group meets every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:45 p.m. at Transportation Depot and free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.womenrunarkansas.net, email, wcrinfo@arspacer.com, or call Shelley Robinson at (501) 538-5680. (The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn)

Melissa Vitale says she is one of thousands of Arkansans whose life has been changed by Women Run Arkansas.

“I have become a runner, and I never thought that I would call myself that,” Vitale says.

In 2011, she signed up in Fort Smith for one of the statewide women’s running club’s 10-week Women Can Run/Walk fitness clinics. In communities around the state, small armies of runners and walkers - not necessarily especially athletic people - volunteer to lead these groups that help women (and a few men) improve their cardiovascular endurance.

In other words, learn to do a 5K.

Those who stick with the program prove their newfound ability in May at the Women Can Run 5K in Conway.

The 2014 clinics, which begin March 3, will include 42 groups in places as far apart as Jonesboro, Hope, Yellville, Camden, Amity - 49 counting the 19 clinics in eight separate locations planned for Bella Vista. Little Rock will have two groups, and there will be separate clinics in North Little Rock, Sherwood and Maumelle (see the chart).

In Subiaco, Geneva Dietz and Tina Zimmer are preparing for about 35 participants. In Russellville, clinic director Kim Head’s 64 volunteer coaches and their eight helpers expect many more: Last year’s clinic drew 976.

“We actually cut off registration at the end of the third week of training last year, I believe,” Head says.

WALKERS AND RUNNERS

At a seminar for clinic leaders every December in Conway, Women Run Arkansas’ statewide coordinator Linda Starr hands out training schedules for beginning, intermediate and advanced walkers and beginning, intermediate and advanced runners. But each clinic’s directors decide which of those levels they will offer. In some areas, leaders don’t feel qualified to lead advanced walking or running, and so those clinics don’t offer all the levels.

Several groups have Facebook pages. Some hold potlucks before their first workouts. A few, including Fort Smith, admit men. Every location is different.

But in general, meeting twice a week at schools or city parks, the clinics teach gradually progressive workouts that include stretches and intervals. Participants are expected to train by themselves a third day every week.

Not everyone who starts the program stays with it. Janice Coulter, a graduate of Russellville’s clinic and now one of Head’s volunteers, says, “Retention is always going to be an issue.” And Vitale, who went from participant to a volunteer coach at Fort Smith’s clinic, estimates one-quarter to one-half of those who show up in March drop out before May.

Vitale says her experience was not easy, but she liked the people. And it was free.

“I amazed myself in those 10 weeks,” Vitale says. “I probably signed up for a group that was a little more advanced than I should have been doing. I started out a little cocky and thought, ‘Yeah, sure, I can do that.’ And then the first night I was like ‘Holy cow.’ But I told myself, ‘I’m not going down.’ … I stuck with that group, and sure enough, I would be one of the last ones in every night, but the encouragement and everything that I got from it, I learned a lot about myself and what I could do. …

“I went from little to no exercise at all to now having completed six half-marathons since 2012.” LATE BLOOMERS

Coulter, too, has surprised herself - and her husband and adult children - by finishing three half-marathons since joining her first clinic at Russellville three years ago. Husband Seth Coulter remembers that when they were in school, he was the sporty one; Janice cheered for him.

“Being a high school sweetheart and watching from the stands can in some ways save you for more blessed exercising later on in life,” Janice Coulter muses.

“I was in the generation where you played outside and you rode your bikes, but I didn’t do structured high school sports at all. I considered myself in shape, but I probably wasn’t in cardio shape. I raised my kids, and my life was devoted to them, and when they got into high school and were driving, I had put on 20 pounds. Then I started biking, and then we did Women Can Run.

“It’s just been wonderful.”

She and her buddy Robin Thomas had no great ambition in mind when they joined the Russellville Women Can Run. Anything beyond that first 3.1 miles was “just not on my radar,” Coulter says. But in an atmosphere that Head describes as “electric,” friendships with other participants turned running into the women’s hobby.

On Sunday, Thomas and Coulter will run and walk 26.2 miles in the Little Rock Marathon with four of their clinic buddies. The others have effectively dragged them along by presenting them their race entries as Christmas presents.

“We’re doing intervals, the Jeff Galloway method,” Coulter says. “There’s six of us, and we’re just going to finish and have a good time. That’s part of the whole Women Can Run, just the camaraderie and the friendship that you build.

“So we have, to my surprise, continued.”

The chart on this page lists clinics with their directors’ contacts. Online registration is at womenrunarkansas.net.

ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 02/24/2014

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