WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2005
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FITNESS
Dog Days creator down but not out
BY ASHLEY MICHAELS
amichaels@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Kerri Henderson/KANSAN
Participants of Dog Days warm up running two laps around the track. Dog Days began as a summer workout for highschool athletes that evolved into a community workout for people of all ages.
For 24 years, Don "Red Dog" Gardner has been an active participant in the Dog Days workouts, with the exception of this year.
"Every year I would do everything they did until now, my back started giving me trouble," Gardner said.
Gardner and Jim "Punkin" O'Connell started Dog Days 24 years ago after watching high school football players go into two-a-day workouts out of shape, which resulted in injuries. The two created the program as a way for players to get summer conditioning and it eventually grew into a community event.
Originally workouts were held at Lawrence High School, but were moved to Memorial Stadium with the permission of Floyd Temple, assistant athletic director at the time. Moving from LHS to Memorial Stadium has made a difference in the number of people that come to the workouts, Gardner said.
"I think the use of the stadium is what brings people to Dog Days," Gardner said. "Most people would never get into the stadium if it weren't for the workouts and the controlled atmosphere."
Mike Neal, assistant dean of the School of Education, agreed that the program would not be as enticing if it were held at the levee, or somewhere else in Lawrence.
The Dog Days crowd is fairly diverse. The three age groups, as described on the Dog Days T-shirts, are high school, college and "has-beens."
"I would say we have about 500 people in the morning and
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500 people in the evening," Gardner said. "It will probably grow in July, it could get as high as 1,200 people."
Workouts last about 30 to 40 minutes with Gardner conducting the drills through his megaphone. Each session begins with
stretching, followed by calisthenics and then running. The runs take different forms. One day it could be stadium stairs and the next it might be bleacher seats.
Nate Rahmeier, second year law student at the University, has been coming to Dog Days for 13 years. He ran cross country in high school and now competes in marathons. He said that Dog Days kept him in better shape than when he was in high school.
The ultimate goal for the end of the summer is to run east up the hill to Gertrude Sellards Pearson residence hall and back and then up the hill to the Campanile and back. To achieve their ultimate goal at the end, workouts increasingly get harder as the summer goes on. And if the weather turns bad, they just take it up to the Kansas Union parking garage east of Memorial Stadium.
Although Dog Days is about getting into shape and motivating people to work out, throughout the years it has come to mean more than that to its faithful following.
"Lawrence is pretty into community, it says something about people wanting to be fit, but it's a great place to meet people and make friends," Susan Stuever, Lawrence resident, said. "It's great for kids and families because it is hard to find an activity that the entire family can enjoy."
"I met my wife at Dog Days in 1999 and we have been
here every summer since," Randy Glidewell, Lawrence resident, said. Glidewell said three other couples have met at Dog Days and eventually married.
Neal describes the Dog Days craze in terms of peer pressure. "If you skip out on Dog Days it's like missing out on church. You are going to hear about it from somebody."
As for Gardner, although he can't participate in the workouts anymore,he doesn't plan on giving up conducting Dog Days anytime soon.
"We thought he'd quit at 20 years," Stuever said. "Maybe at 25 years he'll pass on the torch."
- Edited by Erin M. Droste
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