Tuesday, December 16, 2008

More About Fitness Activities For Good


The work of one of my workout buddies reminds me of the great things we can do to help others as part of our fitness training activities.

Danielle Sharp is a West Des Moines dentist and keeps an aggressive fitness training schedule. As a mother of two, she’s always “on the run”, but she doesn’t let her busy schedule get in the way of her volunteer efforts for the group Autism Speaks. As the mother of a child with autism, Sharp serves on the local board of this organization and helps coordinate efforts for the walk events the group sponsors to raise money (click on “walk events” at http://www.autismspeaks.org/).

Maybe YOU have had a friend or relative affected by another issue and you want to help out. If you lead an active lifestyle, there are a variety of ways to put your fitness efforts to work toward helping a great cause.

The Race for the Cure is perhaps the best-known event nationally that raises funds and awareness to benefit breast cancer research. You can learn more about this event at -- http://ww5.komen.org/findanevent.aspx.

Locallly, there’s the Arthritis Walk -- http://www.arthritis.org/chapters/iowa/ -- or the Governor’s Cup race -- http://www.iagovcup.com/ -- that benefits youth scholarships.

Another helpful effort in this area is Team In Training -- http://www.teamintraining.org/. Working through Team In Training is a popular form of raising money to benefit leukemia research for endurance athletes. This organization makes it very easy to raise money through a variety of distance events throughout the country.

If you want to use your fitness activities as way to help others who are less fortunate, there are countless ways to help out.

2 comments:

Tanvir Kazmi said...

Hey Coach, so did you manage to catch up on some of the running movies with your kids? I've been through 4 on my list, and 2 more are coming up fast!

Coachhrd said...

Thanks for the comment - we absolutely LOVE "Chariots of Fire" (what a GREAT film - gives me goosebumps to just write about it) and we're going to watch "Pre". I would really like to get my hands on the "Spirit of the Marathon" dvd.