Community takes fitness challenge
260 people sign up for June contest
Shawn Giilck
Northern News Services
Thursday, June 25, 2015
INUVIK
Courtney Larocque has plans for you this summer.
Courtney Larocque, a summer student with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, has a plan to get Inuvik residents up and moving. So far, her fitness challenge is proving to be quite a success. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo
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Larocque, the regional sport and recreation youth officer with the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, has started a two-month fitness challenge that's proving to be quite the success so far.
The position is a temporary summer job for Larocque while she's home from university for the summer, but she's intent on making a difference with it.
"One of my goals this summer is to promote physical activity," she said. "So this is one project to help promote physical activity here in Inuvik."
Larocque has focused the challenge, which involves almost any activity that will get people out of their chairs and off their couches, on various organizations in town as a way of gently prodding them into getting some exercise while vying for bragging rights.
"It's just to challenge each other to do some physical activity, and to get leaders in the community out and physically active," Larocque explained. "And I wanted to encourage community residents to compete with each other in a friendly way."
She's running the challenge in two sections, one this month and a new segment that is to begin in July. Winners are to be declared for both months.
She's hoping many of the participants will carry over into the second round.
"We have 19 teams signed up for the month of June," she said. "So that's about 260 participants. It's going very well and the minutes are adding up already."
The format is somewhat like the well-known Walk to Tuk Challenge that occurs every winter. Participants keep track of the minutes they're getting some form of exercise, whether it's by conventional sports and workouts, or by traditional activities such as paddling, hunting or even working around their camps.
The goal is to have people active for approximately 40 to 60 minutes a day or more, Larocque said.
"So we let them choose what activity they want. They can walk, they can run, they can jog, go to the gym or on-the-land activities. Pretty much anything they would like to do. It's just any activity that gets them some exercise and makes use of the green spaces and facilities that Inuvik has to offer," she added.
She says some participants are even choosing to get a little more competitive about the whole matter in the midst of the fun.
"It's going good," she said. "It's been pretty competitive. We have three teams that collected around 20,000 minutes so far. Most of them are being physically active everyday, which is really nice."
It's also a good, if sly, way to make people pay more attention to community health, Larocque said.
"Why not just make it an everyday thing," she said. "We think people are doing a mixture of everything."
In the process, it's making Larocque look pretty good to her boss.
"He's happy that a lot of people are participating," she said with a smile.
