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VIDEO and Story: Rupert runners participate in Global Sports Bra Squad day

The inaugural running event was held at Butze Rapids trail
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A group of more than 20 Prince Rupert women met at the Butze Rapids trail on Saturday, June 24, to participate in the inaugural Global Sports Bra Squad Day. Matthew Allen photo

A wet, rainy evening did not prevent a group of Prince Rupert runners from participating in the first ever Global Sports Bra Squad Day June 24.

More than 20 women met at the Butze Rapids trail and park where they completed the 5 kilometre trail in their sports bras.

Runners and non-runners alike embraced the occasion and its intended purpose, to encourage women to embrace themselves, their bodies and all forms of strength and beauty.

Jamie Komadina, a Prince Rupert blogger and running enthusiast organized the run. She said that while the participants were a little shy at first, it did not take them long to embrace the spirit of the run despite the wet and rainy conditions.

“By 20 metres down the road, everyone’s chatting and stoked and having fun and we took some cool pictures,” she said. “It’s just empowering for people, in this case women, to get together and just do something that is about being strong and exercising and being sweaty and feeling good about it and supporting each other.”

Global Sports Bra Squad Day was started by Kelly Roberts a popular fitness blogger who started running to overcome the grief of losing her brother. In her blog, Roberts describes gaining more than 75 pounds as she mourned her sibling before deciding to go for a run one Thanksgiving morning.

“I didn’t make it halfway down my street before I had to stop to walk, but for some reason, struggling forward made more sense than getting back into bed,” she said. “It turns out that running is a lot like grief, neither ever really get easier, you just get stronger.”

Notice about the Butze trail run spread either through word of mouth or on social media, with some women attending from outside Prince Rupert. Deidre Payette and her daughter Caity are from Port Edward and heard about the event from Komadina’s blog. Payette says it was a wonderful opportunity to get outside, meet new people and support a worthy cause.

“It was pretty freeing and cool,” she said. “Just liking yourself and embracing that idea of the beautiful roundness of the feminine form rather than it havig to be a static ideal of what women should be like and that all women are beautiful.”

After the group finished the run, Komadina encouraged them to take the spirit of the event with them into their day-to-day lives.

“I hope that just by everyone being here together today, it can be like ‘lets roll with this’ or maybe you’ll feel better and do it on your own,” she said. “And tell somebody else something that makes them feel really good about themself because you feel really good about yourself.”