Runners with Heart

      Running is often a YOU sport. It's all about how many miles YOU are going to run that day, the comfort and durability of YOUR shoes, the breathable quality or style of YOUR running shorts and shirt, the course of YOUR preference, the accuracy of YOUR timing watch, or the improvement of YOUR splits from one mile to the next. But there are two groups here in Utah that are changing the focus of the sport. 'Miles for Smiles 'and 'Push to the Finish' are two non-profit organizations committed to giving disabled children and adults the opportunity to participate in local race events.

Running as Service

      'Miles for Smiles' (MFS) wanted to encourage adults with physical and/or mental disabilities to become more active in the community and feel the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction of participating in community athletic events. MFS would team two local runners up with one wheelchair disabled individual, or rider, to compete in the race. This is running as service. The runners ran anonymously so that all the praise and focus was on the rider and not the runners. This is a great opportunity for the rider to be in the spotlight and feel competitive. MFS organized their first 5K event in the April, 21st 2012 with the cooperation of the Salt Lake City Marathon. Five individuals from the Utah State Developmental Center teamed up with ten volunteers from Utah County to compete in the 5K event of the SLC Marathon. As MFS's name implies there were lots of smiles that day. The Department of Human Services published the following comments in an article that captured the excitement.

"The crowd was wildly excited, yet the success of the event was illustrated in the participants’ responses. One female participant excitedly waved to everyone in sight. The enormous smile illuminating another participants' face maintained as he waved his arms and blew kisses to the onlookers.  Another individual from USDC rapidly clapped other people’s hands (from his volunteer teammates, to USDC staff, to random observers) - his effectual excitement over his victory spreading to all with whom he interacted." (http://go.usa.gov/VJh) 

Volunteer Running

      MFS also realizes that the volunteer runners are greatly uplifted by their participation. It gives them a chance to step outside of their worries and focus on blessing the lives of others while doing something that they love. The volunteer runners also become more physically active by committing to participate in these events. Valorie, a 55 year old volunteer from Highland UT at MFS's most recent race in August, had never ran a competitive race in her life but committing to participate in a MFS event gave her the desire to train and become more active. She successfully finished the race while pushing a wheelchair rider. She shared the following, "The smiles of these individuals and the emotional response from the spectators brought many of us to tears. This experience gave me the desire to continue to serve others and stay physically active." MFS is changing the YOU focus of running into an opportunity for everyone SMILE.

      'Push to the Finish' (PTTF) was also started in the spring of 2012 and plans to complete 13 events this year. As stated on their website the mission of Push To The Finish is to provide an opportunity for children with physical disabilities to be able to experience the enjoyment, competition, and sense of accomplishment of participating in a road race. PTTF has made significant efforts to make each child feel special and empowered. The experiences are similar across the board from the families that have participated. Jana, a parent of a child that participated had the following to say, "Thank you so much for this wonderful organization! Ben had such a fantastic time yesterday! Every time we talk to him about it, he gets a big smile on his face. Because of his situation, the one thing he never gets to do is run and experience that feeling of speed. He loved it! What’s more, it gave him such a feeling of empowerment. The entire rest of the day he wanted to do things, by himself, that he didn’t normally do. He seemed to feel that he could conquer the world! Thank you so much for making that possible for him!”

PTTF is putting in a lot of effort to making this experience available to many children by planing race event in communities all over the state of Utah. Check out their website at www.pushtothefinish.org to see if there is a race in your community. 

      You can support these two Non-Profit organizations by "Like"ing their facebook pages and donating both time, sweat, and money their cause.

http://www.facebook.com/MilesForSmilesUtah

http://www.facebook.com/pushtothefinish

If you really love running check out this next article to see some fun races. http://allthingsutah2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/choose-your-flavor-themed-races.html