The Ultimate Connection: Join a Group

By Susan Rich

Put your feet to the street! Organized groups like Team in Training, Portland Fit, and many others educate and motivate hundreds of new walkers every year to finish their first event. You’ll be on your way to making new friends and meeting your fitness goals.

It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold, staying hydrated is important. It’s wise to carry your own water, but you can always grab an extra cup of water or energy drink at a drinking station. Make sure the program you’re interested in provides these stations.

Put your feet to the street! Organized groups like Team in Training, Portland Fit, and many others educate and motivate hundreds of new walkers every year to finish their first event. You’ll be on your way to making new friends and meeting your fitness goals.

Walking: It’s all about you and forming that 1:1 connection between your ambition and your feet.

As with any fitness program, the process begins with getting off the couch and out the door...and can end minutes later with you standing on the pavement wearing new shoes, a rain jacket, and wondering — now what?

If this describes you, take heart: Walking solo can be lonely. Eight laps around the high school track is boring. A 30-minute stroll through the neighborhood park quickly becomes a hohum event. Bringing your dog along is a definite motivator, but when Fido stops every five feet to mark the grass, your patience is getting a bigger workout than your heart.

Sure, you know walking is good for you, and you’re committed to doing it, but at a certain point you realize that a spoonful of sugar is needed to make this particular medicine go down.

This is the time to join a group, and it helps if you choose one where participants are training to meet a definite goal. For example, there are groups that train newbies to safely walk a marathon. Other groups focus on training walkers to finish a half marathon, 10k, or 5k.

There are numerous advantages to joining a group. Regardless of your fitness goals, a regularly scheduled activity is one you will likely attend — especially if you paid money to join. Once you make a few friends, then a different kind of accountability sets in, and you are likely to continue walking, even on the days you don’t feel like it. Eventually stepping out becomes a habit. You start setting mileage goals for yourself and then take delight in achieving them. In this happily-ever-after scenario, walking solo becomes less of a burden, and your motivation remains high, even on those days you walk alone.

“I think a group is really helpful, because you find folks you share a common goal with, and that keeps you motivated,” says Holly Paige, a veteran of two marathons; she also started the Chicago Marathon last year, but the race was cancelled due to hot weather before she finished. She first joined Portland Fit in 2001. “I had always wanted to run a marathon, but I had no real experience (training). I decided that this was the year I was going to do it.”

Paige recalls it took some time to find a partner she really clicked with, but once that happened, her motivation to run 16 miles on a Saturday morning was locked in place. “There’s huge accountability, you can’t just not show up and then make some lame excuse for not coming. Being in a group, finding people you like being with keeps you on task and moving forward.”

For Christmas, Paige gave husband Wayne a gift certificate to Portland Fit. This will be the first time he has joined a group.

“I’m more interested in being part of a group, of having some kind of organized event that allows me to get out,” he says. “I think it’s neat that there’s a community of people I can go out and exercise with.”

Portland Fit trains hundreds of people every year. For some, the organization’s size and goal are too intimidating, and they seek out a smaller group. Benefits here include more personalized attention and routes that might be centered around a particular community.

Kim Cottrell is a walking coach for Foot Traffic University. The group trains out of the Alameda Fitness Center located in Portland, OR. This is her second year leading a walking group, and her team will walk the Foot Traffic Flat Half and Full Marathon on July 4, 2008, on Sauvie Island, OR.

Trying out several groups before you join is a good idea, she says. “I think you have to look at who you are and what your personality is,” she explains. “Each person really knows what they need to make it happen and [the group] is probably out there.

“If your style is low key, then find a smaller group in the beginning. [Others] need cheer leading and a lot of support to get started,” which is why the fanfare of a larger group is compelling for so many people.

The Foot Traffic training program in northeast Portland, OR, is popular, Cottrell says, because it’s community-based. “Eighty percent of our walkers live nearby. They love that this event takes place in their neighborhood. There are friendships developing, and they find people to walk with at other times, not just on Saturday mornings.”

Although all professional groups encourage interactions with the coach, Cottrell and Judy Heller, owner of Wonders of Walking and EroFit & Associates, LLC, can offer tailored advice to their charges.

Every year Heller holds a series of biweekly training sessions designed to help walkers move better, faster, and without injury. “It doesn’t matter if you walk for pleasure, speed, or fitness: Completing a distance event is a personal milestone that boosts self-confidence and keeps you motivated,” Heller says. “And group training is more effective than training alone. You’ll improve your technique, learn how to pace yourself, and discover what to eat and drink on the course.”

Group training, she adds, “Is also a great way to make new friends, explore the city, or support a cause.”

Just Cause
If achieving a distance goal is not personally motivating, but you are driven to help others not blessed with the gift of health, then cause walking might be for you.

Stephanie Hammond is the campaign director for Team in Training, an organization that trains athletes of all levels to complete distance events in various cities.

According to their website, “The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training® is the world’s largest endurance sports training program. The program provides training to run or walk marathons and half marathons or participate in triathlons and century (100-mile) bike rides. Since 1988, more than 360,000 volunteer participants have helped raise more than $850 million.”

“It’s a training program like any other,” Hammond explains. The diffeence: “We take care of the event logistics, so you can focus on training. Team in Training pays for you to attend the event. We register you for the race, provide the pasta party before the event, as well as the victory party and other postevent activities. We pay for airfare and the hotel, too.”

In return, “We ask that you fundraise on our behalf,” she adds. The dollar amount varies depending on the event, but the target is for 75% to go to patient care and research, with the balance going to cover administrative costs.

Cause walking (or running or cycling) is powerful because “People have a connection to the cause. They know someone who is diagnosed [with a disease] or is a survivor. It’s also a way to get in shape and meet new people,” Hammond says. “Some people want to do an endurance event, but it is more important to them to do it for someone else,” she adds.