Try fitness outside the box with local groups Walk2Run and Fit4Mom

Back when her soccer-playing son was 9, Sam Kucaba thought it would be fun to have a sport they both could enjoy. She signed up for a Walk2Run program at the Dick Pond Athletics store in St. Charles. Once a week she ran with the fellow newbie runners at the shop and then her son would join her on her twice a week practice runs at home.

Parents know, sometimes it takes creativity to fit in fitness and thinking outside the box, or gym.

Today Kucaba works at Dick Pond and she loves welcoming runners of all ages and stages for the shop’s weekly runs, where everyone is welcome. Whether jogging alongside a tween or pushing a stroller with a toddler, Kucaba said there’s a running community for everyone.

“For some, running alone can be so boring and doesn’t have to be,” Kucaba said. “You can meet so many people in our walk-to-run and run groups who stay and become friends.”

The shop hosts a number of group runs each week, with something for all levels and experience, from the beginner training for a 5K to someone training for a marathon. Kucaba said the Walk2Run group includes many new to running uses a loop through the beautiful Mount St. Mary Park in St. Charles, so a parent of young ones can finish their distance and reward patient toddlers with some playground time.

Early Saturday mornings, when most shops are still closed, Dick Pond is bustling with runners stretching to prepare for the store’s most popular weekly run session. The shop hosts a variety of training runs throughout the week, and almost all are offered for free. The Walk2Run program is a multi-week program offered a few times a year, and includes additional guidance and a weekly newsletter to help participants stay on track.

On a nice summer morning, around 60 runners will show up for the group run, Kucaba said. The beginning runners will aim for 30 minutes of running, not worrying about distance. Others will try to reach six miles or 11 miles, and of course some will follow their own distance and drop-off when they’re ready to turn back. The group leaders help organize runners by pace and distance.

Studies show group exercise is a great way to stay accountable to a program, and as a bonus, a great way to make friends too. It’s at the heart of Fit4Mom of the Greater Northwest Chicago Suburbs, with classes in St. Charles, Bartlett, Barrington, Algonquin, Lake Zurich and Mundelein.

This summer will mark the 9th anniversary for franchisee owners Nicole Fraser and Kristen Knobloch, marking a journey in fitness and motherhood too.

“This is for moms looking for something as a way to get out, feel less isolated and also meet other moms,” Knobloch said.

She remembers her first class, having just moved to Bartlett she was home with a toddler and newborn and feeling isolated.

“I didn’t know anybody in the area. I spent months alone in a new town with an infant and toddler,” Knobloch said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

During preschool pick up she began to notice a mom pushing a stroller and carrying a yoga mat. Knobloch worked up her courage, after a month or two, to ask the mom what class she was doing and learned it was a “new” thing called Stroller Strides.

“She invited me to my first class and I really liked it. I was hooked after my very first class,” Knobloch said.

Knobloch said her husband, seeing a new light and energy as she talked about the class, decided to surprise her with a membership. It was a transformative moment.

“I don’t think moms really realize they’re losing themselves,” Knobloch said. “When we stay shut in, you lose a little bit of yourself. Here, you get to be around other moms who are going through the same ages and stages of motherhood.”

Five months later, she became an instructor and then, she and Fraser joined forces to purchase the franchise, which they have expanded in size and scope of classes. There are classes for women with children, classes for women only, a run club and there’s Body Well, a multi-week, multi-faced class that focuses on fitness, nutrition and self-care. Knobloch said in Body Well some choose to take it for the eight-week session, others stay for multiple sessions, seeing the value in accountability and connections and setting individual goals for each session.

“It’s 100 percent guided by each individual mom’s goal,” Knobloch said.

One of the reasons she loves the Fit4Mom classes is how it meets each individual where she is, whether she is postpartum, pregnant or perimenopausal. Navigating sleepless nights with a teething infant, juggling a toddler, tween or teen, there’s a fellow mom who’s been there, done that, understands that sometimes, the energy just may not be there, but there’s support and friendship.

“We’re meeting moms where they’re at, physically and mentally,” she said.