Running Classes Help Put Spring Back In Your Step

Ten seconds before the gun. A thin line of tape across the road is all that corrals enough human energy to launch a rocket.

The gun blasts. Four thousand pairs of Nikes and Reeboks, Sauconys and Asics lift to the music of beeping wristwatches.

The start of Coeur d’Alene’s Spring Dash last year left some people unable to move after the event. But the ones who went through the North Idaho Road Runners’ Spring Dash/Bloomsday training clinic finished the five miles in fine form.

That’s all Suzanne Burnside and Donna Telebar want. They’re die-hard runners who seek converts like missionaries. They launched the clinic last year, sympathetic to the slew of people they had watched stumble over finish lines.

“People say, ‘I wish I could be like you,”’ says Suzanne, a 30-year-old mother with legs as lean and efficient as a racehorse. “They can. Anyone can get in shape.”

Suzanne and Donna created a clinic that inches people into running. Veteran runners and experts share information about eating, injuries, apparel, safety and motivation. Runs start with two miles at any pace, even walking, and end eight weeks later with seven miles.

They chat on the runs, encourage friendships among people running the same pace. Jody Averett took last year’s clinic and found two friends. Now she meets them weekly to run and they’ve finished several half-marathons together.

“And I started from zero,” Jody says.

Donna sees herself in Jody. Donna began running 12 years ago after having her second baby. She found friends, ran year-round, finished seven marathons.

“It’s definitely done a lot for my self-esteem. I have no problem with aging,” she says, adding without hesitation that she’s 42. “Finishing marathons has shown me that I can achieve anything.

“I want everyone to feel that way.”

The North Idaho Road Runner’s Spring Dash/ Bloomsday training clinic starts at 9 a.m., March 9, at North Idaho College’s Boswell Hall. Cost is $5 per person or $3.50 per person in groups of four. Call 687-1097 to register.

Poetic politics

Coeur d’Alene’s Millie Hauptmann is sick of politics already, and the season has hardly begun. She’s probably not alone. At least she has an outlet. Here’s how she sizes up election years:

“Election rhetoric from now ‘til November,

Emits a bad aroma.

It’s the only time I wouldn’t mind

Languishing in a coma.”

Flooded with orders

Call them opportunists, but Arlene and Mark Marchese know what people want: T-shirts of the Great Flood of ‘96. The St. Maries couple runs Big River Designs and created two flood survivor shirts.

One features Paul Bunyan floating on an innertube sealed with a red cross (get it?). The other has this line: “Old-timers said it was DEEPER back in ‘33,” under a picture of water-logged telephone poles and road signs. Both have the date the river crested - Feb. 10.

Arlene and Mark guaranteed the shirts’ popularity when they decided to give 35 percent of the earnings to St. Joe Valley Search and Rescue and to the Red Cross to help their flooded neighbors. They’ve sold 400-plus already.

These shirts are certain collectors’ items. Remember the Twin Lakes Massacre survivor shirts from August 1987? Can’t find ‘em anymore. …

How do you know?

I’ll know it’s spring when the bats in my attic wake up and I have to stop using the space for an exercise room.

What tells you that you’ve made it through another winter? Muddy shoe prints on your kitchen floor? Newborn lambs in your barn? Divulge your spring signs to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; FAX to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo