Runners and walkers braved cold temperatures and snow piled high to compete in the Duneland YMCA’s 10K/5K/2K Walk at Lakeland Park in Burns Harbor on Saturday. The race was the 3rd in a series of five that the YMCA is holding throughout the Duneland region.
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“This is Race #3 of five,” said Ashley Hall, Health Living Coordinator at the Duneland YMCA. “We’re exploring all the towns in the Duneland area and we’re in Burns Harbor today. We’ve done about three months of work getting ready for each race so there’s a lot of planning. We’ve gotten lots of great sponsors for the races so it’s been great. We really pride ourselves on the routes that we use and the courses. We try to run high quality events for everything we do.”
“We already raced in Chesterton and Porter,” Hall said. “Today is Burns Harbor, next up we have Dune Acres and then we’re ending with Beverly Shores, and we’ll start the series over again in October. What we’re trying to do is build our community and build awareness that the Y is for everyone.”
Echoing Hall’s sentiments and speaking about how much of an impact the Duneland YMCA is looking to have in the community was Jane Delligatti, Marketing Director and Director of Social Responsibility at the YMCA.
“The next race will be in Dune Acres will be all-terrain and the final race in Beverly Shores will also be an all-terrain race,” said Delligatti. “They’re really challenging courses. The 5th race will culminate in a party where people are honored if they’ve run all five of the races. It’ll just be a good time and help to develop a sense of community in every community that we serve.”
“Typically the Y hasn’t done a lot of outreach so we feel this is an important added facet of what we’re doing,” Delligatti said. “People have seen our Y as the ‘Chesterton Y’ and we’re not. We’re the Duneland Y. We serve Chesterton, Porter, Burns Harbor, Dune Acres and Beverly Shores and we want to have a presence. I think a lot of people don’t know that we exist to help people live their best lives and to help people get better and better. We start with kids as young as six weeks old and we have around 300 kids in our after school program learning about science, technology and math. We also have a wonderful youth sports program and a very active senior center. Ashley Hall has really stepped up our game so there’s something for everybody.”
Winning the 5k race with a time of 23:50 was Chesterton graduate, and Valparaiso resident, Michael Haley.
“I thought it was a really cool experience,” said Haley. “I’m not too familiar with this park or that it was even here so it was really cool to see. It was a great environment and the elements, the fact that it snowed, definitely added something to it. The snow was kind of like running through sand so there was a little bit of a different momentum there. I like to do obstacle races normally but I’m going to do all five of these races because I really want to support the Duneland YMCA.”
Placing first overall in the 10k portion of the race was Young Lee with a time of 40:09.
To find out more about the Duneland YMCA visit their website at: www.dunelandymca.org/