Run, Karla, Run!

Happy National Running Day! Runners don’t usually need any excuses to lace up our joggers and hit the road, track or trail. But if we do, National Running Day is about as good as any.

Running groups across the country have planned events in cities far and wide from San Francisco to El Paso and Little Rock to Washington, D.C., to celebrate putting one foot in front of another. There are 87 official events for runners and walkers alike.

Most of the events—which include group runs galore—will take place after work hours today starting around 6 pm. To find an event near you visit Runningday.org. Their handy participation calendar lets you search by city, state, zip code or event name.

And if there isn’t an event where you live, it’s still easy to participate: all you have to do is go for a run or walk.

National Running Day started last year as a way to celebrate and promote running as “a healthy, easy, and accessible form of exercise.” Some of the nation’s biggest running organizations—such as USA Track & Field, Running USA, New York Road Runners (of which I’m a member), Atlanta Track Club, The Competitor Group, Oregon Track Club, Marine Corps Marathon and many others—banded together to get America running and help fight the national epidemic of obesity. Here are National Running Day’s “7 Reasons to Run.”

☆   Nationwide, the annual medical expense for juvenile obesity is more than $127 million annually.

☆   Health-care expenses and productivity losses related to obesity problems cost Americans more than $100 billion annually.

☆   Currently, obesity-related illnesses cause some 300,000 deaths a year. Inactivity and poor diet will soon overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

☆   Overweight youth ages 10 to 15 have an 80 percent chance of becoming obese adults by age 25.

☆   Only one in four kids gets at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Kids and teens obesity rates have doubled in the past 20 years.

☆   According to the American Sports Data 2007 Superstudy of Sports Participation, 39.5 million people in the United States ran or jogged at least once, and 11.7 million ran more than 100 days/year.

☆   In 2008, according to Running USA, there were 9.2 million finishers in road races (ranging in distance from the 5K to the Marathon), a 4 percent increase from the 8.8 million finishers in 2007.

If you love to run, walk or are curious about running, help celebrate National Running Day. It’s easy. Just go for a run.

Here in New York, it’s 80 degrees and the sky is blue without a cloud in sight. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. I will be heading to a track workout with my running team, the New York Harriers.

Happy running everyone and Happy National Running Day!