Moms on the move: All-women triathlons popular with baby boomer generation

Marla Emde and Robin DeRuwe created the Valley Girl and Wunder Woman triathlons to offer women a space where they could compete in a friendly, non-intimidating environment that would encourage more ‘average women’ to participate in sports.

And Valley Girl regular Colleen Cicarelli, 41, is living proof Emde and DeRuwe have succeeded.

Cicarelli was motivated to sign up for the Valley Girl after she worked the event as a volunteer in 2004 and realized that you didn’t have to have Mia Hamm’s body or Marion Jones’ speed to complete a triathlon.

“I was out there on the course holding a sign that first year, me, an overweight 38-year-old woman, moderately active, but definitely not an athlete � I could hardly comprehend the distance � and watching these women go by,” Cicarelli recalled. “So I watched the first woman pass me, and she looked like she was floating, feet barely touching the ground, just beautiful, exactly what your preconceived picture of a triathlete is, and not like me at all. Then another group came by, also looking like triathletes.

“But then came a whole bunch of women like me. All just normal people, just having fun. All struggling, smiling, working hard, of different ages and sizes. There they went by me, and that’s when I was like, ‘Hey, I could maybe try this.’ “

Putting things in context

But there’s more to the success of the Valley Girl triathlon and the growing number of women-only fitness options like it than just the fact they provide a space for the girls to get together and have fun. Many believe that the recent women’s fitness fad is the culmination of a second-wave “Women’s Revolution” that began with the institution of Title IX in 1972 and has been building ever since.

Kellee Daugherty, 44, spent most of her 20s traveling, working for Microsoft, living life and just having a good time. She got married at 31, had kids at 35 and 38, and now she’s a stay-at-home mom with nine-year-old twins and a six-year-old boy.

Busy moms with young children have very little time to themselves, and the events such as the Valley Girl give these women an attainable goal to train toward with what little time they have.

“It’s perfect for the stay-home or working mom who’s not in super duper shape, but who wants to keep going,” Daugherty said. “You don’t need a whole lot of time to train. I can go for a run and have the kids ride their bikes with me. But for me, it’s more of a lifetime goal of just doing something each day to stay active.”

Born in 1963, Daugherty was one of the last of the baby boomers who ushered in the fitness craze of the 1980s.

“(The boomers) are a big chunk of people getting older who have kids a little bit older, like me, but still want to run around with the kids, stay in shape and play the games that they’re playing,” Daugherty said. “It just keeps you motivated.”

In addition to the maturing boomer population, the first generation of women who benefited from Title IX are now in their 40s and looking for ways to maintain the active lifestyles they cultivated when they were young.

Emde was entering her teen years just as Title IX was being introduced in 1972, and later on made her living as a professional cyclist. Thus, she’s one of the first women for whom sports became a means of livelihood instead of just a childhood hobby. Now, at age 48 and retired from the professional world, Emde’s trying to help women like herself finds ways to maintain their fitness goals.

“The Title IX generation is now coming of age and orchestrating this women’s fitness revolution,” Emde said. “It’s a recent development: The baby boomers created this fitness craze with the running phase 25 to 30 years ago, and since then, with women growing up playing sports and becoming bigger players in the work place, they need to feel strong and feel good about themselves, and fitness is the key to that.

“It’s not so much about being overweight or not, though most women are pretty tied into how they look, but it’s just that they want to feel good. Mom wants to take the kids out and play softball, too.”

This weekend, Emde is hoping to further expand the athletic avenues available for her generation of women.

To raise awareness for osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease that is common in post-menopausal women, the Wunder Woman triathlon will include a category specifically for women triathletes with osteoporosis.

“We’re working with the Spokane Osteoporosis Center to create some visibility and awareness about the disease,” Emde said. “They get very little funding, and it’s the first time anyone’s involved them in a race like this. But we’re opening doors to a lot of women who want to stay fit throughout their lives.”

This mindset has filtered down even to the last generation of pre-Title IX women. Connie Dormaier, 55, graduated from high school two years before the institution of the law that mandated equal athletic opportunities for girls and boys in school.

“For gals like me in high school, we were cheerleaders and there was dancing,” said Dormaier, who has also done the Valley Girl several times. “It was only in college that I found out women could run.”

For women like Dormaier, an all-female sports event like the Valley Girl was a very empowering experience.

“We never had stuff like that in school,” she said. “And it was just exciting to be part of something like that with so many different women.”

Beyond the Title IX generation

Because the 21st century woman grew up around sports, she is eager to continue prolonging her body’s shelf life.

That’s where women’s workout clubs like Moms in Motion come into the picture.

Kirsten DeHart started the Spokane chapter of Moms in Motion � a national organization of fitness teams for women � two years ago because as the mother of two young children, she realized she wanted to find a circle of women with similar athletic interests whom she could turn to when she needed to just get away.

“The group draws mostly women with young children because they need times away and it’s tough to get that time,” DeHart said. “For myself at least, the normal groups where you sit around and eat snacks weren’t really doing it for me. So it’s just an opportunity for us to be away from our kids for a bit, and not just get sit and eat snacks, but lose the baby weight and work out together.”

The group meets once a week to train for events throughout the year like Bloomsday, Valley Girl or some of the local marathons. The group now also has a swim team and a track team, and DeHart estimates that she’s reached out to more than 150 women since the club’s founding in 2005.

For 31-year-old Angie Gardner, the camaraderie and inspiration that her Moms in Motion teammates provided helped her get over the baby blues she experienced right after her second pregnancy.

“I had the baby blues after I had my daughter, who’s 2, and I remember going out to the first practice, meeting everyone, having a great time, and I came home and it’s like suddenly I like my kids again,” said Gardner, “It made me feel human again to get out with other women who have the same concerns and issues that I do. We all support each other.”