Entering the fourth year of its existence, Fresh Air Fitness has earned fame not only locally, but also provincially. But like any other sports or fitness facility, it is now closed due to the current health situation.
Peggy Rohatyn, who co-founded and maintains the facility alongside Debby Knight, said that while their community plans for this spring and summer were affected by the pandemic, they still are on track with bringing more equipment in for the future.
“We’ve got a couple more pieces coming and I’m sure that they’ll be up this summer,” said Rohatyn.
The facility is now taped off to prevent the public from using it, but while it is closed, Rohatyn and Knight still have to maintain the outdoor equipment.
“There are some pieces that get put out in the spring. We’ll definitely do that, we’ll put those back out again. You have to think positive that sometime this summer we’ll be able to use it,” said Rohatyn. “And we’ll do any maintenance that’s needed.”
The Coal Country Run, a fundraiser that helps the outdoor gym to stay open and well-equipped from year to year, was slated to happen May 9 in and around Woodlawn Regional Park, but it has been called off.
“It’s been cancelled already because we had to do it early enough (before) we ordered T-shirts and stuff like that. There is just a lot of prep that has to be done before that. And if we left it too long, we wouldn’t be able to have the same calibre of the race,” Rohatyn explained.
Now they are hoping to organize some kind of community activity in the summer if the pandemic is over then, but Rohatyn said it was too early to talk about it yet.
“We don’t really want to say yet, because you want to wait to see what happens when we are able to go down there and run stuff like that,” said Rohatyn.
“We are planning something more of a celebration of ‘Thank God, this is over!’ sort of thing.”
The Coal Country Run was supposed to be their main fundraiser of the year, and Rohatyn noted that when it was cancelled many people who already paid their registration fee told her to keep the money for the needs of Fresh Air Fitness.
“That was really awesome. And actually, when I posted that and people were saying ‘Keep mine, keep mine,’ Queen City (Marathon), Regina’s run, they follow us, they were super impressed and made a comment of how impressive the nice words were said and how people rallied around when the race got cancelled,” Rohatyn said.
They also get donations from businesses in town and Rohatyn was very grateful for all the support. If someone wants to make a donation, they can reach out to Rohatyn or Knight on Facebook.
Rohatyn said that while they are closed there are a number of other sports facilities in town that offer different types of online workouts, exercises and programs. So they decided to leave it to the professionals and just wait until they can open their outdoor gym to the public. In the meantime, their main recommendations are quite straight forward.
“Just to get out and go for a walk or go for a run is good not just for your physical health, but for your mental health also. As long as you keep your six feet apart you are good,” said Rohatyn.
Fresh Air Fitness follows the provincial guidelines and directions from the Woodlawn Regional Park and will reopen when they say it’s OK to do so.
