Ken Lynch has been organizing and orchestrating a summer fun run program for about nine years now and last week, participants finished the final week of a six-week endeavor.
The running group is completely free and those coming to the camp are there to enjoy the outdoors and to improve their fitness and endurance for the upcoming fall sports season.
This summer was the first year the program fell under the umbrella of the Londonderry Recreation Commission and had just over 50 youngsters signed up. Over the season, runner’s worked to improve their time on the high school’s cross-country course with a focus given to self-improvement.
Fellow volunteers, Nicole Hand and Ken’s son, Colby, helped out with the program, which took place behind the Londonderry Middle School where kids would work out with different running-based games after warm-ups and stretching.
Each session lasted about three-hours in the morning and was geared to anyone that wanted to get into shape for middle school fall sports at no cost to the participants.
Runners began and ended the season with a time-trial on the cross-country course, where students could see how much they had improved over the season.
Hand, who has been helping for the past three years, enjoys seeing the growth of the kids, saying, “Seeing the Transformation is the most amazing aspect of the camp.”
Lynch, who is a retired police officer and volunteer at Matthew Thornton Elementary School, says he plans to continue the program for as long as he able to do so.