Origin Story

We are complicated characters in the story of whole human health.  When the Platte River Fitness Series first started out, we centered our work on physical health and fitness.  News stories of the expanding health crisis came almost daily and for the first time in two hundred years, the lifespan of a generation of children was expected to be shorter than that of their parents.  In the early 2000’s, the rate of chronic disease that could be directly linked to lifestyle was climbing.  The Platte River Fitness Series started as an effort to address rising rates of preventable disease and the diminishment of quality of life and the way those things affected our local community.  If the work of the Platte River Fitness Series is a story, and I think it is, inspiring the sedentary to move was its central theme. We continue to write new chapters together as we learn just how much movement matters to the entirety of our wellbeing.  We have also learned that connection and community are the forces that do the writing. Our story started with caring people on a mission and a simple idea.

As we moved into the twenty-first century, a strange dichotomy was developing between the perpetual advances in our understanding of health and the actual health of an ever-growing number of Americans.  As the calendar rolled to the year 2000, the predictions of the collapse of our computer systems didn’t materialize.  Something more insidious, however, was growing increasingly ominous.  As we changed millennia, the chasm between the behaviors known to improve human health and the actual state of health for many Americans was growing ever wider. There was plenty of blame to throw around, but in the end, our lack of movement and poor diets were getting expensive; rising healthcare costs, loss of productivity, lowered quality of life, and the ultimate price, disease and death. The steady gains made in medicine, health and wellness struggled to slow the tick toward decreased longevity, not because the science was failing, but because the behaviors so detrimental to human health were finally taking their toll “en masse”.

In the 1950’s, the decade I was born, only about 10% of the U.S. adult population was considered obese.  By the early 2000’s, the time of the start of the Platte River Fitness Series, the obesity rate had climbed to over 35%. In 2017, the year my youngest grandchild was born, the number had grown to nearly 42%. With the news a buzz with statistics about the growing health crisis, a group of concerned citizens from North Platte came together in 2001 with the shared mission to do their part to improve the health of our local community. 

The original community group called itself “Healthy for Life”, an apt name to describe their desired goal.  There were doctors, nurses, others in healthcare, educators, businesspeople, and me, the local representative from the Recreation Department.  My job was to develop a plan to get people up and moving.  Full disclosure, I must have had a lot of people fooled.  I have no degree in exercise science, recreation, health education or any related field.  What I had going for me was my own lived experience, a heart to live in the service of others, and a belief that what worked for me could work for others.  What worked for me?  A race.

I knew what inspired me to work harder to keep moving and that inspiration served as a very simple premise to a story that continues over thirty years later.  I struggled with weight since I was a teen, trying every diet and newest exercise craze around, but the one thing that finally made a commitment to exercise last for me was the purpose, the “why”, the “something bigger” I found the first day I showed up to a road race.  I fell in love with the motivation, the intention, and the community all sourced from a single day in June. 

At first, I’ll admit, I was terrified.  It took some encouragement from a friend and my honest desire to be an empathetic swim coach to get me to show up on race day.  I wanted to be able to honestly say to my fidgety swimmers, so anxious before a race, “I see you and I know how you feel.”  Too many years had gone by since my swimming days to say that with any credibility.  I needed to compete. I needed to feel the jitters, the butterflies, the doubts so that I could hold space for those feelings in my anxious little athletes. I had started running about 9 months before that mid-June morning in 1993 when I arrived at the Rec Center for the NEBRASKAland Days Road Run.  Running seemed easier than gathering a house-full of children for the 25-mile trip to the pool and I knew I had to get moving. My first excursion in running resulted in a mile covered and a certainty I might die.  Much to my surprise and the relief of my kids, I survived.  I ventured out for run number two the next day.  Slowly, steadily, I transformed my identity of ex-swimmer to novice runner, admittedly not exceptionally talented at either of them.  I started synchronized swimming at eight and competitive swimming at fourteen.  I started running at thirty-three, with too many years of being sedentary in between. Apparently, a leopard can change its spots, or at least goggles can morph into running shoes.

If God gave me little athletic ability, He did offer me a consolation prize.  Natural endurance.  Thus, I chose the 10K rather than the 5K for my first race.  In my swimming days long past, I accepted that I was never going to be fast, but what I could do was swim lap after lap at a nearly perfectly consistent pace.  I remember well, or as well as our memory ever serves us, being comfortable with my choice of distance but feeling out-of-place at that first race.  In today’s jargon, you might say I had “imposters syndrome.” Even though I knew I could cover the distance, I wasn’t going to fool anyone into thinking I was a “runner.”  When I first arrived on race morning it felt like just another place I didn’t belong. There were the “real runners,” with legs strong and defined.  The “real runners” were thin, waif like people, with the kind of physique I could only dream of. But there were other people there, and they seemed like real runners too.  People of different shapes, different sizes, a gorgeous blend of all kinds of humanity. I most certainly was not a “real runner.”  As I waited anxiously for the race to start, something happened that changed my perspective on why we race and why we run.  A couple of the “real runners” easily and nonchalantly welcomed me to the morning and to the starting line with words of encouragement, dripping with warmth and a genuineness that made me feel like maybe, just maybe, it was okay for me to be there.  I didn’t belong because of how I looked, or because I had the fanciest shoes, or because I had any talent.  I belonged because another human being or two saw me and chose to welcome me to the same journey they were about to take, albeit in a shorter time than I.  For 6.2 miles, we were going to be fellow travelers.  They talked of their deep and nearly mystic love of running and of being in a community of runners.  At no time during that first race, nor in very many races after, did I feel like I had to earn my place of belonging. It was the race and the people who knew why they raced that made all the difference.  I have spent the last two decades trying to do that for others.  (And for those who know them, my welcoming committee at my first race was none other than Wayne Wallace and Chris Jarvis.)

The grim statistics of how and why a sedentary lifestyle is killing us were the sparks that lit the fire for the Platte River Fitness Series.  Certainly, the original group of citizens came together to do something about that sobering reality.   What is also true is that at the heart of the Platte River Fitness Series, there is a story.  The story of a race.  Like any good story, I mean a really good story, there is so much more to it than what we see at first glance.  On the surface, a race is a contest of superior speed.  Who can cover a prescribed distance in the shortest amount of time.  Ah, but underneath the surface is the truer story of why our purpose, our vision, and the foundation of our work all emanate from a race. 

A race checks all the boxes of a really good “why.” First, you need to prepare for a race through training and from that, you learn the value of consistency.  Next, you need to move in a variety of ways to stave off injuries and boredom. The very first Platte River Fitness Series race was a triathlon, an intentional effort to re-enforce the value of cross-training.  Then, you must make a few modifications in the way you eat and drink.  The more miles you put in, the more your body draws you to more nutritious choices…. you learn to listen to your body’s language.  You develop an exercise practice getting ready to race.  You learn to have discipline. There’s an entry fee.  A modest monetary investment has been proven to make a difference when it comes to committing to an exercise program or improving our habits.  When we “put up,” even a little, our brain tells the unmotivated part of us to “shut up.” There is the motivation to improve, and we learn to reach for a “personal best,” not just in racing, but in life. The beautiful thing about running, or swimming or cycling or all three together is that you do not have to cross the finish line first to win.  If you improve your own performance, you win, and you can continue to “win” for decades.  There is the idea that a race is based on our biologically hard-wired need to move.  You find your first 12-week training plan, where running (or wogging or walking) reveals its true self by teaching you that you can do hard things.  You can keep going.  Finally, there is the gathering at a race, a gift that completes us as human beings…the connection to other human beings.  You find your “people.” We show up at a race because we know that there will be others to whom it matters.  We learn to be accountable for ourselves and for others. We connect with them in a knowing glance when the race gets hard, and in the welcoming warmth of people who want to share their racing joy with hugs and high fives.

The Platte River Fitness Series is still writing its story.  It is humbly trying to use something small, a race, to do something big, “to bring people and causes together in a collaborative effort so that individuals can achieve whole human health in a flourishing community.”  And so the story continues…