Mill Valley’s annual event promotes health, exercise

Marin Independent Journal (CA)

Jan. 15--Heidi Schumann, of Mill Valley, started her weekend with crab walking and lunges on the Mill Valley Community Center lawn, along with her two children, early Saturday.

The 43-year-old said she thought the group exercise provided an ideal way to be active with her kids, 6-year-old Lily and 4-year-old Neko Fletcher.

"It's rainy and winter and the kids need more exercise," Schumann said. "So any kind of exercise we can do together is great. A lot of time I do exercises and they climb all over me."

Schumann was one of 25 people who did crunches and worked out at a Family Fitness Class that was part of Mill Valley Recreation Department's Health and Wellness Fair and Family Fun Run on Saturday.

For the fifth year, the recreation department hosted the event that featured a 5K, other runs and a health fair with 68 vendors.

Kathryn Reisinger, Mill Valley recreation supervisor, said the event not only provides a recreational event for families to engage in during the winter months. It also helps attendees kick off a healthy new year, she said.

"(It's good) with New Year's resolutions and trying to start off healthy and well and bringing in that family element," she said. "People make goals personally, but if we make it together as family, you're exponentially more successful and happier in meeting your goals."

Tilda Loftin, a Mill Valley-based personal trainer, led the morning Family Fitness Class. The course was the first of many to be held through upcoming months.

The 45-minute class, which is free to all participants, is held on the Mill Valley Community Center lawn, from 9-9:55 a.m., on the second Saturday of every month.

After leading the morning course, Loftin then manned her own booth at the event's health fair. The 37-year-old provided information about the mobile app she helped launch one year ago, Strong Mom.

The app offers more than 100 exercises that mothers, moms-to-be and those planning to become mothers can do. The exercises are broken down into stages, including during, before- and after-pregnancy.

"If pregnant, you punch in your due date," Loftin said. "If you're at week 29, that'll take you to week 29. And then you can do that. You can always scroll through exercises. Let's say you're planning to get pregnant and want to build up your body before pregnancy, go to before-pregnancy and do those exercises."

"Research shows fitness, working out during pregnancy, before and after decreased postpartum depression; you bounce back much faster from pregnancy, and labor is less severe," she said.

Tamalpais High School's Tam Garden Club also manned a booth at the health fair. The group sold hand-made birdhouses and seed bombs and attempted to bring awareness to their club which was recently formed to bring life back to the high school's garden, said Eva Brazer, 17, who helped run the booth.

"It's neglected," the high school senior said. "There was a lot of trash. We spent the last semester cleaning it up and now we're going to start planting. We've been fundraising so we have enough money to do all of that."

With funds raised, the roughly 60-member club hopes to start a hydroponic system at the school, as well use permaculture techniques that mimic natural ecosystems.

At the Health Care for All California booth, Deborah Spanier, with the Marin chapter of the organization, was spreading the group's goal of ushering in for Californians a health-care system with single-payer financing .

The group promotes a health-care system that no longer uses insurance companies as primary payers for medical care. Instead, the government would pay for health care through an insurance tax, Spanier said. The goal would be for the tax to be cheaper than premium costs, while doctors and hospitals remain private, she said.

"We feel it would be a universal system and nobody would be left out and it won't be tied to your job and the other advantage is simplifying administratively so doctors don't have to spend so much time dealing with insurance companies," she said.

Jennifer Lee, of Mill Valley, attended the health fair with her 1-year-old son and husband to promote their Sausalito-based bicycle company, Cleary Bikes.

But Lee, 42, said after walking through the fair, she learned of the numerous health resources available across Marin.

"The community we're in is very aware of wellness issues, but it's great to hear there are local places to go for things. You don't have to go to the 24 Hour (Fitness). There are independent, Marin-based people that are health and wellness focused," Lee said.

___

Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.