GREENBRIER — Residents of Greenbrier are getting ready to participate in the third annual Mayor’s 107-Plus Challenge on Friday, and after being honored by the state for wellness efforts, the city has a reputation to uphold.
Shellie O’Quinn, director of the Melton Cotton City Event Center, said the walk/run challenge will continue through April 16.
“The idea is that people would walk an average of a mile a day, so they’d do roughly 107 miles,” Quinn said. “Almost anybody can do a mile a day, so it’s an achievable goal.”
Greenbrier, which was designated in December as an Emerging Healthy Community by the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention for the city’s efforts in community wellness, received the honor for the Greenbrier Gets Fit program. In 2012, the Arkansas Department of Health invited Greenbrier to be the first city in the state to join the department’s Web-based healthy-lifestyle program.
O’Quinn said it all started with a focus on city employees getting healthier, but Greenbrier Gets Fit quickly expanded to the community.
She said the idea came from former longtime Mayor Melton Cotton and is continuing with Mayor Sammy Hartwick.
The program started as the Mayor’s 100-Plus Mile
Challenge, and when a radio station started sponsoring the event, its name was changed to the Mayor’s 107-Plus Challenge, she said.
People can run, walk, bike or roll in their wheelchairs to rack up their miles, O’Quinn said. To register, go to greenbriergetsfit.com.
Hartwick said that last year, he and his wife, Cheryl, put in their 107-plus miles, and they will participate again.
“Oh, yes, it’ll start again at the first of the year,” the mayor said. “We mostly walk — wherever we can — up here at the track, or if it’s nasty, we have a treadmill at the house. There’s a subdivision behind City Hall we like to go walk when it’s nice.”
Hartwick said programs such as this get people out and “get them moving.”
“The city wants to be proactive in people’s health and try to help them do all they can and support them. If they want to meet those goals, we want to be there to help them all we can,” he said.
On April 16, the culmination of the challenge, residents are again invited to walk a mile with Hartwick at the event center, 5 Lois Lane.
O’Quinn said she wants to make this year’s event more of a festival atmosphere.
There will be bounce houses for the kids, “safety things, and we’re also going to have some healthy screenings this year,” she said. “We’re trying to line up live music and some craft vendors. We really, really want to make it a big event. We want it to be extended a little bit longer than a couple of hours when you come out and walk. We’re trying to roll it into a big community event on the 16th to celebrate wellness and the healthy community we have, basically.”
Awards given will include the Overachieving Team and Overachieving Individual awards and the Spirit Award.
Also, the second-annual Mustache Dash 5K, a timed event, is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. April 16 at the event center and will end at the center.
“That [5K] was the kind of going beyond — the plus part of it,” O’Quinn said. “We’re hoping people who walked last year will have set a higher goal to run or walk a 5K.”
To register for the 5K, go to racesonline.com/events/moustachedash5k.
A beard and mustache contest will be held at 11 a.m. The contest was started last year “just for fun,” O’Quinn said.
Trophies will be given for the best beard and the best moustache.
Hartwick said the challenge event is “a big deal; we’re going to try to expand on it every year.”
For more information, call O’Quinn at (501) 679-6362, or email greenbriergetsfit@gmail.com.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.