Take the Lake makes EDUCATORS theme for 2012

The 2012 Take the Lake campaign poster.

Reprinted from the March 19 edition of The News Reporter.

The Take the Lake committee got an early start on the 2012 season by announcing its theme for the year. The theme will be “educators,” which the committee announced at meetings of both the city and county school boards and at a county principals meeting.

The Take the Lake committee has worked to improve the physical fitness for all Columbus County residents, and is pursuing this goal mostly through 

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a three-day series of Personal Endurance Challenges (PEC) over Labor Day weekend. The event is free.

Participants can either walk or run 15 miles, “Bike & Hike” 15 miles, paddle 14 miles or swim four miles. They can participate in any or all four PECs for free.

In only three years, more than 2,400 people have walked, run, bicycled, paddled and swum more than 30,000 miles during Take the Lake. But organizers know that those numbers represent only a small portion of the Columbus County population.

The committee began using themes last year, starting it all with a military theme. This is working well for two reasons; one, themes add variety to the event each year; and two, they help target and motivate a specific group of residents toward better fitness. 

Teachers work tirelessly to educate and inspire children and to help them grow into healthy adults. They begin work early each day, and are there for their students when and where they need them. They do all of this “with the passion only a teacher can muster,” organizers said, and they do all of this “with the love only a teacher can offer.”

The dedication of our teachers is often poured out so thoroughly to their students, that they forget their own physical and health needs. As the semesters and the decades pass, they trade their own youthful, active lifestyles for the daily grind of preparing the future of our county and our country.

The committee told the boards that “We believe that our teachers deserve a chance to do something for themselves, they deserve to know that all the promise they offer their students belongs with them also; that they can be happy and healthy, and that they can do whatever they want if they set their minds to it. Our teachers should know that we believe they are the best, and that they deserve the best life has to offer.”

Take the Lake will be held during Labor Day weekend, Sept. 1-3 this year. For people who want to attempt to complete all four PECs in a single day, the Take the Lake X-TREME! will be held the Saturday prior, Aug. 25. (This event has an entry fee.) New this year, groups can team up for the X-TREME!