Club offers training support, camaraderie

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By Ann McGlynn | Friday, July 21, 2006 1:52 AM CDT | () comments

The ad lured in Jennifer Hildebrand.

Featuring some middle-age women in sweatsuits, the advertisement promoted a Cornbelt Running Club group organized in 2005 specifically for women who wish to run or walk the Quad-City Times Bix 7.

“If they can do it, I can do it,” figured the 49-year-old mom and nurse from Princeton, Iowa.

She was the last person to finish the course during the group’s first meeting, she said. She started feeling some pretty tremendous foot pain. And the medication she took for migraine headaches, which slows blood flow, wasn’t exactly the right thing for someone taking up running.

So she got some inserts for her shoes and her doctor found a new medicine.

Today, Hildebrand is a perfect example of what the club is meant to do: help women of all abilities feel comfortable with and learn more about running and walking.

She’s even got a medal from a small-town road race to show for her efforts.

“The women have been so supportive, particularly Judy and Theresa,” Hildebrand said.

Judy is Judy Teeple, a longtime successful runner. Theresa is Theresa Walters, who co-leads the group along with Teeple. They meet with about 60 other women on Monday nights for two months before the Bix 7. First, the group hears from a speaker. Then they go out on the course.

Some are experienced runners, Teeple said. Others are women who always wanted to run but never felt comfortable doing so. Some ran in high school.

The club is extremely popular, she said.

“For our first Bix training meeting, we tried to hold it in the Cornbelt office. It was overflowing. We were jammed in like sardines,” she said. The meetings are now held in the cafeteria at Palmer College of Chiropractic.

Speakers include dieticians, physical therapists, women’s heart health specialists, weight training experts, a podiatrist and seasoned runners. The club members are given a training schedule to fit their own goals — whether they want to walk, run or walk and run the Bix 7, Teeple said.

Cornbelt also offers a spring women’s club, she said. And once Bix weekend is over, informal running groups probably will form.

Marcy Wickersham, 65, had been “sort of” running for quite a while. She thought that joining the club would be a “good time for me to do it and learn how to do it right,” she said.

That happened. She also made a lot of good friends and her time on the Bix 7 course has improved.

“I’ve learned how to train properly. I just thought you got out there and ran. That’s not how it works. You don’t run hard every day. You have rest days. You break it up. I’ve learned a lot from the different clinics that we’ve had before every run, a lot about how to take care of your body while you are running.”

Jessica Imm, 22, who joined the Bix 7 training group this year, heard about it from a co-worker. She went the first night, then brought along a friend the next week. She ran during and after high school, but a knee injury had slowed her down a bit.

The goal, if her nagging knee behaves, is to run the Bix 7 in less than 55 minutes this year.

The women’s group provides her with motivation, “especially since you know that you are going to be there every Monday, you know you are going to see other women there and catch up with them.”

For Hildebrand, motivation comes in the form of a medal for finishing second in her age group at a race in Camanche, Iowa, and from the Christian radio station she listens to each day in her car.

“I would never have thought I would get into running at this stage in my life,” she said. “I used to sign up for races for the T-shirt. I would never even run the race. Now I give the T-shirts away. I don’t even care about the T-shirts. I run the race. My motive is different since I joined this women’s running group.”

Ann McGlynn can be contacted at (563) 383-2336 or amcglynn@qctimes.com.