I came to that conclusion this morning at the 10th anniversary celebration of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. The occasion marked a chance for the Foundation to look back — at the more than 440 grants totaling $67 million that the Foundation has given health-related non-profits since its inception in 2000 — and to look ahead — with the granting of another $1 million to 10 non-profits, ranging from the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and N.C. Association of Free Clinics to Access East and FOGGNC (Friend of GetGoingNC) Be Active North Carolina.

It was also an opportunity for me to look around and catch up on the latest news from a host of folks. Folks such as …

* *

… Jodi Hubble of Be Active North Carolina.
“Did I tell you I’ve left Be Active?” Jodi said, effectively killing my first question: “So what will Be Active do with its newfound grant money?”
Jodi told me she’d moved over to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s Triangle affiliate as Development Director. I was about to comment on Komen’s phenomenal success, specifically with its local 5K Race for the Cure, when she trumped me again.
“We’re looking to add another race,” she said. “Our race here has become so big. We’re at about 25,000 now.”
A second race, she said, would be added in Eastern North Carolina, likely in one of the few communities big enough to sponsor such an event: New Bern, Greenville or Wilmington. “We’ be the first affiliate to have two races,” Jodi said.
Since its inception in 1982, the Dallas-based non-profit has raised $1.5 billion in the battle against breast cancer. There are now 140 races annually attracting 1.6 million runners and walkers. Pink used to be associated with Mary Kay (another Dallas institution); today, Komen has a lock on the color, which shows up on everything from dainty ribbons on babies to the shoes of NFL players.
Jodi is an appropriate match for helping expand the local Komen running franchise: in September, she completed her first half marathon, the Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half.
More on the new Eastern N.C. Komen Race as it develops.

* * *

While I was chatting with Jodi, Nell Barnes came up. I consider Nell my boss: She’s the Executive Director of Learning Together, the best non-profit, five-star, developmental day care center going. I say that with bias: my daughter and step-daughter both attended Learning Together and I serve on the Board of Trustees as secretary. Nell is Learning Together, an organization that had an especially profound impact on my daughter. Thus, I will do whatever Nell asks. This morning, however, she acted mostly as a conduit, introducing me to Juliellen Simpson-Vos, the new Executive Director of Girls on the Run (and, coincidentally, the wife of another of my bosses, Mark Simpson-Vos, my book editor at UNC Press).

During my final days at The News & Observer (sounds ominously Nixonian), I wrote about Girls on the Run, a Charlotte-based non-profit that operates running programs for girls 8-12. The girls meet with a coach a couple times a week over a 12-week period; the program culminates with the girls (and hopefully their families) running a 5K. Actually, running is more of a vehicle for delivering confidence and a healthy self-image to girls of an impressionable age. The local GOTR affiliate was launched in 2001 with 20 girls on board; today, there are 29 GOTR programs throughout the Triangle serving more than 700 girls.

Speaking from self-interest (that step-daughter who attended Learning Together is now a 7th-grade runner), I asked Juliellen if GOTR had thought about a program for middle school girls. “Actually,” she said, “there is a program that’s offered called Girls on Track. So far, it’s met with mixed reviews.”

Mixed, she explained, because middle-school is a funny age. Girls that age, she said, feel like they’ve aged out of organized groups, like Girl Scouts. “But they really need that organization.” To date, Juliellen said Girls on Track hasn’t been offered in the Triangle. However, she said her group is discussing such a program with the local YWCA.

More on this as news develops as well.

* * *

I felt like a remora to Nell’s shark, for not long after introducing me to Juliellen she introduced me to Wayne Marshall. From 2000-2006, Marshall chaired the City of Raleigh Parks, Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board. I was all set to pick Marshall’s mind but before I could speak he began freely sharing his experience. He told me stories about plans for parks that never came to be (the master plan for Millbrook Exchange Park called for a train similar to the one at Pullen Park; as of today, the park remains trainless) and parks that haven’t yet come to be. That brought up Forest Ridge Park, and that conjured an uncharacteristic frown.

“My wife and I were hiking there this weekend,” Marshall said. “The color, the beauty, what a terrible thing to deprive the people of Raleigh.”

Earlier in the decade, there was considerable excitement in local rec circles when plans for Forest Ridge, on a 586-acre peninsula on Falls Lake, were announced. The master plan released on July 11, 2006, called for miles of hiking and mountain bike trail, an adventure education center, ropes course, lakeside center, multi-use activity areas and an adventure education overnight lodge. That was in 2006: Today, four and a half years later, nothing has happened at Forest Ridge. What’s the deal? I asked.

“I have to go to New Orleans now,” Marshall announced. “When I get back, we’ll go out there for a hike and tell you about it.”

I’ll get back to you on this one as well.

Photo: Official words are spoken at today’s 10th birthday celebration for the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, held at Marbles in downtown Raleigh.

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Right, I gasped to myself. And you can pick up my lung when I cough it up.

It was my first “coached” running workout and a whirlwind of thoughts rushed through my oxygen-deprived brain as I did the third of my four prescribed 600-meter sprints (bookended by a pair of 1,000-meter dashes). Will I be seeing that tuna wrap I had for lunch again? was foremost. Why am I doing this? was a close second. By “this,” I meant hiring, at age 54, a coach to drive me, push me and to make my body feel like it hadn’t since I’d last crossed paths with a coach in high school some 35 years ago.

Quick background: Back in my 20s, I ran — a lot. Mostly 10Ks, about 30-35 miles a week. When I turned 30 my back and knees simultaneously quit; I turned to swimming, cycling and other less-pounding pursuits. Then, last fall, the bug to run, which had never entirely disappeared, surfaced when I started reading about where running was headed. Out were the days of long, meaningless training runs intended solely to rack up miles. Today, the smart runner runs less but makes every mile count. Less emphasis on long pounding runs, more on interval training. I was also inspired — as have been countless others — by “Born to Run,” which, among other things, repudiates the heel-strike movement of the ‘70s in favor of a running stride emphasizing a forefoot strike.

I enrolled in the Fit-tastic walk-to-run training program, which promises to take non-runners and make them capable of running a 5K in 12 weeks. My plan: Prove to myself that I can still run a 5k, then go back to cycling. After three months of training I figured my knees and back would renew their protest and force me back into less impact-insistent activities. Three months of knee and back cooperation, that was all I asked for. Then they could protest all they wanted.

Oddly, that didn’t happen.

In fact, I regained my dormant running form and did pretty well in my 5K return, finishing third in my age group in my first race. I kept running through the winter, upping my mileage. In April, I did a 12-mile trail race. Inspired, I enrolled in the Fast Coaching half marathon training program over the summer. On Labor Day weekend I exceeded my expectations, running the Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in 1:45. I was happy, my knees and back were happy. What next? I thought.

The Second Empire Grand Prix 2010 Fall Series, it turned out. The series is a collection of eight races, ranging from the mile-long Magnificent Mile to the Anna’s Angels 10-miler. Most of the races, though, are 5ks, which set up the obvious scenario of trying to improve with each successive race. That meant doing a lot of the “smart” training, with long runs interspersed with intervals, that I’d been reading about. And that planted the seed of hiring Coach Tim.

Back in the ‘80s, Tim Clark was a competitive runner. He’d nearly broken the 15-minute barrier in the 5k, did 31 minutes and change in the 10K. Tim knew about effective training, and what he knew he’d been passing along to others for the last 15 years. (Tim had coached our Fit-tastic group.) And because Tim had been a competitive runner, he knew what it took to meet a goal: someone riding your butt, indifferent to the fact you were beet red, out of breath and about to come un-wrapped.

Coaching adults, even ones who are paying you, is no easy task. First and foremost, they are adults. They take grief daily on the job; they aren’t up for more, well intended as it may be, come playtime. The trick, then, is to be encouraging and demanding without coming off like a high school football coach. You don’t handle a sulking adult who balks at doing that last 400-meter interval by getting in their grill and questioning their manhood. Rather, you do what you would do with a challenging employee: you gently tell them they’re doing good, then throw in the “but” — “but you need to do better.” Especially if they hope to achieve this dubious goal of being 18 again.

At first, I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d hired Tim. Because everyone is doing it? (The American College of Sports Medicine says taking on a personal trainer/coach is one of the top 10 fitness trends for 2011.) I didn’t have long to mull it over; the first question Tim asked was, “What’s your goal? What are we shooting for here?” So I made one up on the spot: I want to break 21 minutes in a 5K. Tim created a workout routine aimed at helping me do just that. And that’s when I realized how Coach Tim differed from Coach Lucifer back at Gateway High: When you’re in high school, the coach gets you to do what he wants you to do. When you’re an adult, a coach helps you achieve what you want to do. Therein lies the danger of hiring a personal coach:

Be careful what you ask for — a coach will make you work for it.

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