Healthy Hearts 5K -- what a success!

To the Editor:

I can’t believe it has already been a year since the inaugural Healthy Hearts 5K and I sit here thinking, once again, what a success!

Last year’s event pulled 90 registrants and my personal goal was to simply reach 100 for 2012 and we exceeded that by a large margin. There were 165 registered with 147 on the starting line for race day. I can’t begin to thank everyone who made the day possible, but here goes nothing.

Chisholm Ski Club- you guys rock! Early that morning, while Bob worked on setting up the technology, Roger and Charley built a chute for the participants to finish through, making it easier to keep track of the order. The club came fully equipped with a big screen TV to display times and rankings. It means so much to the community that they provide a service like this free of charge for fundraising events. Even before the event was over we were working on how to make it better for next year.

Cherri Crockett and I want to share high fives with all our sponsors and volunteers for making this event so successful. Like last year, it was our vision to inform, entertain, and fundraise at this event we dubbed, “A River Valley Community Event” and we feel as though we did just what we set out to do.

Much different than last year there was an overwhelming presence from the youth in our communities. We had four schools represented by teams; Andover and Dirigo Elementary School, Holy Savior School and Mountain Valley Middle School. Combined, the schools totaled 65 students, faculty and family members in among the field. Mission accomplished!

We hope the HH5K in 2013 will see that number even higher. Med-Care Ambulance and their partnership with Parent Heart Watch was able to sponsor a portion of what it took to provide the elementary schools with team t-shirts.

The generous sponsors for this event included Irving Forest Products, River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition, Key Bank, Mexico Pizza Hut, SG Thibault Funeral Home, Sun Journal, Rumford Falls Times, Carrabassett Water, Davis Florist, BC Consultants and Amato's of Rumford.

There were so many other sponsors that either provided a service or donated materials and without them we would not have had the festival feel we had on that gorgeous Sunday.

Med-Care provided an overwhelming amount of 12 lead EKG heart assessments, River Valley Chamber of Commerce allowed us to use equipment, Karen Mann and River Valley Zumba provided the warm up exposing the audience to a new form of fun exercise, Heather Hollenbach updated our logo, Kristen Provencher and the Mountain Valley Peer Helpers for manned the registration table, among other things. Rebecca Skibitsky and the Interact Club provided stellar face painting and musical entertainment, and River Valley IT helped us with the website layout, www.rvhcc.org.

We owe a huge thank you to Chief Stacey Carter and the Rumford Police Dept., and Roy Hodsdon and the Mexico Explorers, for using their crews to direct traffic and keep everyone safe.

We owe another special thank you to Bruce Farrin for capturing it all on camera. Anyone wishing to see pictures can view them on River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition’s Facebook page. Thank you to our many volunteers out on the race course directing runners and passing out water and freeze pops, without your help our race course wouldn’t have been as safe and for that we are grateful.

I am feeling blessed to live in this community and I am so looking forward to next year already!

Sandra Witas,

River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition