The goal of the Active Southern West Virginia Training Teams is to provide a fun, safe, social and effective training schedule to prepare runners for area events. The Active SWV Fayetteville Training Team began training for the October 10th Sticks & Stones 15K Trail Run on July 26th with the help of Training Team Coach Sarah Coffey. Sarah had competed in the Sticks & Stones 15K for the first time the year before in fall 2014 and is now training for her first marathon on November 1st at the Marshall University Marathon.
The team trained for 10 weeks starting in Fayetteville Town Park and then moving to the Arrowhead bike trails to increase distance; in the weeks leading up to the race the team ran portions of the race course at Babcock State Park a few times. We are extremely proud of Linda Kessler for training for and competing in their first 15K race and of David Dickerson, Vince Nicolau, Jamie Sharp, Toby Evans, Brett Skaggs, Tina Skaggs, and Beth Hudspeth for finishing with the support of the Training Team and Coach Sarah.
Training Team Coach Sarah Coffey came in first place female and beat her personal record for the 15K distance. Beth Hudspeth also beat her personal record for the 15K distance and Assistant Coach Toby Evans beat his time from the 2014 Sticks & Stones race.
Huge thank you goes to Toby Evans who stood in as Assistant Coach for Sarah when she couldn’t make it to training and for leading the pack to flag the routes.
Thanks to Vince Nicolau and Hilary Nicolau for helping run lead, middle, and back sweep when needed.
And finally thanks to Donnie Hudspeth, race director, for consulting with the team when they came to practice on the race course.
We would also like to thank our Training Team Sponsors MedExpress and Access Health for their continuing support of our effort to foster healthy habits in the residents of southern West Virginia.
Now it’s time to get ready for the next opportunity to support Active Southern West Virginia and get out running together again! On October 24th Active Southern West Virginia will be hosting the Active SWV Glow Run Fundraiser in Fayetteville Town Park. These funds will go directly to our Active SWV Kids Running Club benefiting kids in Summers, Nicholas, Fayette and Raleigh Counties. We held our pilot Kids Running Club at Valley Elementary School in Fayette County this fall and in 2016 Active SWV will expand that program to Nicholas, Raleigh, and Summers counties. Your contribution to this event will have a lasting impact on developing active lifestyle practices within our youth. Additional donations greatly needed.
Register here for $17.50 or on site the day of the race for $20.00 from 4:30pm-5:30pm. The race begins at 6:00pm. Everyone is required to have a headlamp or flashlight. If you would like to see the course before the event, please meet our Community Captain Vince on Mondays at 5:30pm at the Fayetteville Town Park. The group meets at the second entrance by the National Park Service trail head.
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