By Mary Ann Bragg
mbragg@capecodonline.com
March 25, 2012
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PROVINCETOWN — Michael Ekman heads east on Bradford Street Extension. He runs uphill. He’s sweating and wearing his black Provincetown Fitness Challenge T-shirt. Next to him, Thom Hochard keeps pace. Hochard wears the same T-shirt. They turn right on West Vine Street and get a short reprieve. It’s downhill for one block.
A few minutes before, the pair passed Sewall Whittemore. She’s wearing a yellow zip-up jacket and lime green sneakers. She’s doing the 12-week fitness program, too. She walks in the opposite direction but on the same route. They’ll meet back at the public library for coffee, part of a weekly community-wide run.
The three face the same difficulty — resisting the tendency of the human body at rest to remain at rest. The Fitness Challenge, which 100 locals are participating in, is the antidote.
“I’m not weighing myself,” Ekman, 60, says on the downhill stretch. “But my pants don’t fit.” He means they’ve loosened. He’s fighting boredom with his exercise routine. He lifted weights before but that grew stale. Overeating set in. Even overcoming the very specific eating and workout routines of the Challenge wasn’t easy. “Lots of resistance early on,” Ekman says.
Hochard, 54, takes long strides nearby. He’s fighting weight gain and his avoidance of the gym. He and his husband would eat large meals at restaurants, never once thinking of taking a “doggie bag” home. The aftermath — being stuffed with food — wasn’t satisfying at all.
“It’s such an awful feeling,” Hochard says. The pair turn left on Tremont Street and climb a slight hill.
Whittemore, 67, wants to make her exercise routine more effective, and get stronger. Along the walk, she and two companions discuss right whales at Herring Cove Beach, paperwork required for affordable housing, a recent reading at the Unitarian Universalist church, fishers and a new movie about food.
There’s not much discussion of fitness, in fact none at all.
“I haven’t done any measurements,” Whittemore says.
At the end of the run, a dozen people gather around a table in the library’s reading room. The organizer, All-American runner Matt Clark, who’s also the library program director and a Nauset Regional High School coach, shows everyone, upon request, where he had tendon surgery on his ankle. Library director Cheryl Napsha, who’s also doing the Challenge, assures everyone who’s new that it’s OK to drink liquids in a library and have other sorts of fun.
Whittemore has to skedaddle. Earlier, though, she’s revealed her biggest accomplishment. She can hold a squat position leaning against a wall for five minutes. That’s up from 51 seconds when she started. “It’s working,” she says.
Hochard has lost 16 pounds in the 10 weeks of the Challenge, and Ekman has a few feats under his belt as well. He can hold a plank position for more than seven minutes, up from three minutes at the start. He also can hold a squat for more than seven minutes.
“It went by really fast,” Hochard says.