RunVassar creates site for athletes

Elizabeth Pacheco Sports Editor

With its acres of hills, trails and woods, Vassar’s campus seems to the ideal place to run. Until recently however, students, faculty and administrators have been without access to reliable information on how to run in a healthy and effective way. Noticing this problem, members of Vassar’s cross country team have created the organization RunVassar to “give the campus a resource to help them get fit,” said one of the club’s founders, president Jamie Anderson ’08.

Originally known as the Track Club, the organization was renamed and slightly reconfigured when track became a varsity sport this fall. Whereas track club may have been daunting to students because its members competed in intercollegiate meets, RunVassar is “accessible for the whole campus without the intimidation caused by competition,” Anderson said. Wanting to reach all those in the greater Poughkeepsie community, the organization developed a Web site, runvassar.com, “for runners of all levels of fitness and ability.”

The Web site offers a variety of resources including amps of running routes, training plans, shoe reviews and a calendar of upcoming races in which runners can particpate.

While the organization and the Web site were started by a group of Vassar’s varsity runners, RunVassar has no official affiliation with the varsity cross country or track teams. The founding varsity runners, however, are responsible for maintaining the site and answering any questions posted in the public forum. Besides Anderson, the other student-athletes responding to questions in the forum are Colin Sanders ’08, Alexander Booth ’09, Andrew Utas ’09 and Laura Coogan ’09. Questions can be posted anonymously and can include concerns about injuries, running routes, equipment and nutrition.

The forum also functions as a place to organize group runs. “One of the important things—to get people to run with friends—can’t really happen until there is enough interest,” said Anderson. “A lot of people already run with friends, so I hope pairs will match up.”

As experienced runners, these students have also posted running routes on the site, which feature maps, mileage and detailed directions. The site does not only include routes in Poughkeepsie and on the Vassar campus; it also covers national and international cities such as Los Angeles and Paris. Though the site is not completely finished, Anderson hopes it will finally be completed over the winter break.

For those interested in running regularly, runvassar.com has a training plan menu from which you can choose a plan most appropriate for your needs based on experience, commitment and goal distance.

Those who have consistently followed a RunVassar plan are then eligible to apply for the sponsorship program, regardless of athletic ability. With sponsorship, a runner can “avoid the entry fees at road races, get reimbursed for travel fees, get personalized training programs and wear a runvassar.com jersey,” reads the site. Sponsorship is free for all current Vassar students and costs an annual fee of $40 for alumnae/i, faculty and administration. The Web site even lists upcoming races for participates to choose from, as well as a page dedicated to athletes’ race results.

Another goal for the organization is that after students have used runvassar.com, they will want more challenging running and racing opportunities, and will consider trying out for Vassar’s varsity cross country or track teams.

“The whole point of runvassar.com is to make running more accessible,” said Anderson, “getting the campus healthier and fitter doing a sport we love.”