CARRYING THAT WEIGHT TOGETHER

With the sixth running of my annual fitness/charity event, the FELIS FIFTY coming up on March 30th, as a local fitness activist I’ve been thinking about Change.

 Change has been on my mind a lot this past year, employment changes, health changes, life changes.  Since the last time I carried my trademark 50 lb duffel-bag 50 yards, 50 times down at the Foley Field running track in 2012, leading a small diverse parade of friends, neighbors, elected officials and first-responders to benefit the Bloomfield United Way, I spent a week at Hackensack/Mountainside for a bout of pulmonary blood clots, and moved a mile or two south of my dissolving marriage into an apartment in Bloomfield Center.

 Despite losing a year of the FELIS FIFTY to these challenges, I’m instead happy to concentrate on the triumphs: coming back from hospitalization to train with fitness students more intensively than ever, celebrating birthday # 56 by regaining my personal-trainer certification after studying all through the Winter, embracing a loving new relationship as well as a renewed relationship with the life of my Town.

People dread ‘change’ like they dread earthquakes and tidal waves.  It’s true.  But change is unavoidable, and it’s all around us.  Living downtown, I see it every morning as Bloomfield Center rises up and rebuilds itself.  And I see it in this Spring thaw, how change is essential to growth and renewal in our lives.

In fact ‘change’ is why we do fitness in the first place, right?  Any kind of change is a challenge, sure.  But it’s that challenge that changes our lives for the better.

Through exercise we strive for change and improvement.  And it’s no coincidence that through charity we strive for change and improvement as well.  They speak the same language, and that’s why a fitness/charity like the FELIS FIFTY is such a natural fit, a real no-brainer.

At it’s generous heart, the FELIS FIFTY combines a can-drive benefitting the Bloomfield United Way food pantry with the chance to express your generosity through activity.  Do you know how much a bag full of canned goods weighs?  At any other can-drive, you just drop off your stuff and be on your way.  Well, if I can turn 56 and still walk 6 ½ laps (that’s the 50 yards, 50 times part) with a 50 lb duffel bag, I challenge everyone to walk the laps with me, carrying their contributions.  At the FELIS FIFTY, the natural fit between fitness and charity is that even when you donate, you start the Spring off with a hell of a workout!

I believe in ‘fitness activism’, not just getting people excited in fitness, but getting them excited about LIFE, about their own lives and possibilities.  That’s why I spent a couple of hours last month stamping my boots into the layer of ice covering Foley to spell out the word ‘FELIS’ in big block letters, letters  that stand for ‘Flexibility, Energy, Life, Inspiration and Strength’, the attributes of healthy living.

Leading up to my charity event, ‘Felis February’ was a way to recognize that even if we’re snowed-in, the opportunity for active exercise is all around us, waiting for our creativity.  And if we have to venture outside (as so many of us had to this past Winter), it takes a fit body to keep ourselves and others safe.

Despite sporting a new look these days (gone is my old crew cut, replaced by a healthy head of hair and beard because my brand of fitness is less about drill-sergeant discipline and more about ‘creative challenge and adaptability’) the FELIS FIFTY still promises to be the same combination of athletic effort, family fun and community service.  Except this year, with donated gift-certificates from the Town Pub, the Wellness Center, Chalet's Coffee Shop, Pete the Computer Geek, Vinnie's Restaurant, Hot Bagels Abroad, Paradise Pet, Jersey Fitness, Lunch Box Cafe, Prime Time Pizza, Brookdale Pet, Powerhouse Gym, Bloomfield PBA #32, Gencarelli's Bakery, Angelo's Restaurant, Guerilla Fitness, Tease Salon, the Fitness Factory, the Bloomfield Fire Dept., El Matador Restaurant, Sisto Realty, Plaza Fitness, Bloomfield Health Foods, Tone Fitness and many more; I hope to expand the festivities to include some intensive competitive entertainment involving kids, adults, athletes and our own first-responders.

What kind of competition?  Come on down to Foley Field on Sunday, March 30th at Noontime, bring your friends and family, your cans, your bags, your weights, your stamina and your generosity and find out for yourself!

To find out more about participating in this unique event, contact me at 201-463-6909, or e-mail scrooks@felis.com.