The city’s Parks Foundation is challenging Calgarians to get active and explore the Rotary/Mattamy system.
Hit the trail, Calgary, and log 150 kilometres while you’re at it.
To celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary — and to raise awareness for the city’s Rotary/Mattamy Greenway, a 138-kilometre-long pathway that encircles the city — Parks Foundation Calgary has created the Greenway 150 Summer Challenge, asking individuals or teams to walk, run, bike or rollerblade 150 kilometres on the Greenway.
Leapfrogging your specialty? Excellent. As long as you cover the kilometres sometime between June 25th and the end of August, you can count them. And because the Greenway connects 13 parks and 55 communities, there’s plenty to explore.
“Tackle the challenge your own way to make it fun and achievable for you,” says Sheila Taylor, executive director of Parks Foundation Calgary.
Whether that means going it alone, working with your family or signing your dog up as a teammate — which is not only accepted, but encouraged — the challenge is meant to be a create-your-own adventure.
“We just want people to learn all that our city has to offer and to get out there and celebrate it,” she says
To celebrate everyone who completes the challenge, Parks Foundation Calgary will hand out medals at parties held in every quadrant of the city on Sept 2nd.
Says Taylor, with a laugh, “I’ll have to look into whether a medal is a choking hazard for a dog.”
The Greenway 150 Summer Challenge begins on June 25th. Visit greenway150.com for more information and to sign up.
Michelle Magnan McIvor is a Calgary-based writer. A former health and wellness columnist with the Calgary Herald, she has written for publications such as Maclean’s, Canadian Business, Chatelaine, Flare, Avenue and Reader’s Digest. You can find Michelle on Twitter, Instagram and, most days, drinking coffee somewhere in Mission.
