Member Blogger Kathleen Bush sits down with Certified Running Coach and Cycling Instructor Extraordinaire Missy Witte to talk about her new running program, yoga, and how she stays motivated to set and reach her fitness goals.
Randy Pausch, motivational speaker and author of “The Last Lecture,” once said, “You have to decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore.”
This quote, a favorite of Midtown Cycling Instructor and Running Coach Missy Witte, an obvious “Tigger,” has served as both her mantra and approach to life.
If Missy’s energy came in a bottle, everyone would want to drink it. As a role model for a healthy lifestyle for both her clients and her three active, young children, Missy’s genuine desire to help others achieve their fitness goals is obvious by both her work and positive demeanor.
Although perhaps best known for her invigorating cycle interval workouts, cycling is not Missy’s first workout of choice.
“Running is my true love,” she explains. “I have a good base, a good background. I have run eleven marathons to date. I’m definitely looking for more.” Missy is so passionate about running that she obtained her running coach certification. Her new running program launches this week.
Training New Runners and Seasoned Race Veterans
Missy’s putting her Certified Running Coach credentials to work in getting the club’s running program off the ground.
“There are three ways to work with me. For private or group training, you’ll run with me and/or a group of other Midtown runners of similar ability. You’ll also have one hour per week of endurance and/or strength training with me, in addition to training tips or support.”
Members who have enrolled in the running program communicate with Missy at least three times a week, and on Sunday, each person receives a personalized training plan for the upcoming week.
There is also coach-only training, with all the benefits of the private or group options, minus the hour-long training sessions.
The program is for runners at all levels, and for those who want to begin running. “Anyone can do this,” Missy explains. “It is a very open, friendly program. Whether you just want to be able to run a mile, or run your first race, or you are a veteran chasing a PR – this program can help you.”
This is Not Your Cookie-Cutter Program
“I’ve had a ton of success with one-on-one tailored programs,” Missy says. “The new running program I’ve created is not a cookie-cutter program you could find on the Internet. Following one of these doesn’t make sense. It’s like ripping a fad diet out of a magazine. It won’t work.”
Pointing out the benefits of training with a coach, she says, “I get feedback from my runners about their bodies and progress and I adapt it to meet their needs. It is very much about what works for you, and not what your friend is doing.”
Best of all? Accountability. “If I’m not hearing from you, you’re hearing from me,” says Missy.
Staying Motivated
Missy has always set goals and worked to achieve them. “I do a ton of visualizing,” she explains. “As I approach 40, I don’t want to give up doing what I love.” To those trying to stick with a fitness commitment, she offers this piece of advice: “The hardest part is making the decision to just go. Then the rest takes care of itself.”
How a Runner Became a Yogi
To help rehab a potentially debilitating muscle tear, Missy turned to yoga. “If you can find time to do one extra thing, make it yoga,” she says. “Before I started yoga, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s not for me. I need adrenaline. I need to sweat.’ But trust me, you will sweat. What a workout. I haven’t had to go back to the weight room since.” Her orthopedic doctor, also a marathon runner, was blown away by Missy’s increased flexibility and her rehabilitation after she began practicing yoga. She acknowledges, “If I can extend my running into my 70s, this is how I will be able to do it.”
What’s In Missy’s Kitchen?
Missy is quick to share her top foods. “Greek yogurt. My kids like it too – they say ‘Mom, this tastes like ice cream!’ Also I love Kashi cereal. I mix it in yogurt for texture.”
She also adds that she has a stash of dark chocolate hidden away, and a supply of fresh strawberries and blueberries are always in her fridge. She and her family also eat a lot of chicken for protein.
Some might be surprised to learn that Missy had a lucrative pharmaceutical sales job, which she left after the birth of her first son in order to obtain her certifications and pursue a fitness career. “I moved toward something that I really, really loved.”
And she never looked back.
For more information on Missy’s running program, which can help you start running, train for your first race, or PR your 50th, contact her at melissa.witte@midtown.com or 461-2300, ext. 324.
Five years ago, Randi Lattimore was working as a substitute yoga instructor when she entered General
Manager Glenn William’s office to introduce herself. On his desk were the blueprints for the Mind/Body Studio renovation project.
She had found yoga years earlier and immediately loved everything about it: how it made her feel, the way it changed her body, the inner strength and peace she felt at the completion of each class. She quickly transitioned from practicing yoga to studying it, visiting studios across the country, absorbing what worked and what didn’t.
On that day in 2006, she sold her vision for the club’s Mind/Body Studio to Glenn. She then came up with her job title of Mind/Body Director. She hired dear friends as instructors. She expanded the offerings to encompass varied forms of yoga.
And she quickly created a culture of genuine connections and care amongst instructors and students that has flourished over the past five years and has made Midtown’s yoga program the best in Rochester.
Roots and Rhythm
A former event planner, Randi is originally from the West Coast. She then lived in Chicago for a number of years, and hand-picked Rochester as her new hometown over ten years ago when her husband’s job required them to move East. As a transplant to the ROC, Randi’s Midtown coworkers quickly became her family, a relationship that helps foster the warm community atmosphere and philosophy that permeates every yoga class.
While she feels teaching yoga is what she was meant to do with her life, Randi has big dreams to both appear and act as a guest judge on ”So You Think You Can Dance.” If she couldn’t teach yoga, Randi would love to dance professionally.
Teacher Training
Randi recently worked to certify Midtown as a Yoga School through Yoga Alliance.
Yoga Immersion and Teacher Training* begins on October 28th. The Immersion section, for those interested in become more well-rounded, informed practitioners of yoga, runs for eight weekends (a total of 80 hours) until February 5th of next year.
The Certification Option, for those wishing to pursue the Yoga Alliance standard of a 200-hour training program, includes an additional 40 hours, and extends until May of 2012.
Following the completion of 80 hours of Immersion, 40 hours of certification, and homework, practice time, and reading, graduates will receive Registered Yoga Teacher Certification, a degree many yoga studios, including Midtown’s, look for when hiring instructors.
Says Randi, “Our club has always offered a breadth of yoga workshops and special events, so it’s a natural progression for us to become a Yoga School. Our students are ready for this. Our yoga instructors are ready for this. And the training is diversified, so the instructors will teach to the strength of their students. I am so excited about this program.”
Inside Randi’s Fridge
When she’s not running the Mind/Body studio, Randi enjoys spending time with her husband of 16 years, her 15-year-old daughter, and 13-year-old son.
When I ask her about the three food items she keeps in her fridge at all times, Randi says, “Greek yogurt, almonds, and fruit. Always, lots of fruit.”
What’s one thing most people don’t know about her?
“I would rather eat chocolate cake-with chocolate frosting-than just about anything else in the world,” says Randi. “Love it!”
Midtown Pride
Randi is to Midtown’s Mind/Body studio as Bill Gates is to Microsoft, so she has experienced many proud moments in her tenure at the club.
“When members approach me and say how they couldn’t get through their divorces, their cancer battles, or their other difficult times without yoga, it’s incredibly gratifying,” says Randi. “It’s one of the best parts of my job.”
Her most memorable moment, though, took place at the club’s first-ever “Thanks for Giving” yoga class, a donation-based class benefitting Bivona Child Advocacy Center held annually near Thanksgiving.
Randi has visited the center, which helps child victims of physical or sexual abuse, and in the one hour she was there, she watched three children walk in needing assistance, something that had a profound effect on her.
The class was in shivasana, Hallelujah was playing, and Randi looked at fellow yoga instructor and friend Karen Lederman and began to cry. There were 90 people in the class, and Randi was full of joy at the contribution the club would be able to make to Bivona to help abused children like those she saw during her visit.
Yoga is for Everyone
Think yoga isn’t for you?
Randi hears this all the time. And to the yoga naysayers, she says, “Give it a try. Yoga is for everyone, for those who think they’re not flexible enough, or not relaxed enough, or who don’t think it’s a good workout. As I like to ask the doubters, ‘When you’re dirty, are you too dirty to take a shower?’ Of course not!”
The four-week Yoga School for Beginners, which will teach you yoga fundamentals and prepare you for taking one of the awesome yoga classes offered at the club, starts on October 17. Check out our Facebook Events page for more information.
Yoga is an Experience and Not “Just a Class”
It’s a practice that enables you to connect with people, to interact, to touch, to laugh, and to share. It helps you to center yourself and strengthens your muscles at the same time.
Randi has made our Mind/Body Studio not just a physical space for members to practice, but has also embodied it with a spirit that carries yogis throughout their daily lives.
And thanks to my interview with Randi, this Type A, tightly wound, former yoga-doubter will be trying it very soon.
*Contact Randi at randi.lattimore@midtown.com with any questions about Midtown Yoga Immersion and Teacher Training. If you have at least one year of yoga practice, you can pick up an application at the front desk.
She loves paddle tennis with a fierce passion, but her first love is swimming.
Before this year, she had never tasted coffee, but her 5am Midtown shift-starts made it a necessity.
And you’ll never see her without pearls.
Keegan Brown is the club’s Swim Lesson Coordinator and a Swimming Instructor, a competitive paddle tennis player, and a big-time Zumba enthusiast. She credits Midtown’s Zumba classes for her 30-pound weight loss.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Keegan and we talked paddle, swimming, and why she has exactly three colored Sharpie markers in her possession at all times.
Sporting Roots
“Growing up in West Irondequoit, my sports-oriented parents taught both my sister and me that girls could do anything that boys could do,” says Keegan. So she played volleyball, kickball, and of course, she swam. Mike Cahill, the Head Swimming Coach at RIT, was Keegan’s swimming coach for over 15 years.
After graduating first from MCC and then from St. John Fisher, she worked in the non-profit industry for a few years, but then returned to her sporting roots when she started working for the club in 2009.
Midtown allows her to both fulfill her professional goals and her personal ones.
Paddle Prowess
As a paddle tennis player for the past four years (three years competitively), Keegan participates in five paddle leagues during the season, and plays in tournaments across the Northeast once or twice a month. She comes from a paddle family (both her mom and her aunts play as well), and Keegan plays against her mom each Wednesday.
As a board member of SIS (Sustain, Inspire, Survive), an organization offering financial assistance to those battling breast cancer, Keegan hopes the 5th Annual Ladies Paddle Tournament for which Midtown is donating its courts next January will climb from 122 players in 2011 to 130 in 2012 to make it the biggest paddle tournament in the country.
On Deck and in the Pool
Paddle is a fall and winter sport, so when not on the courts, you’ll find Keegan on the pool deck coordinating group swimming lessons or in the pool teaching both young and not-so-young Midtowners to love the water. Keegan says, “I love watching the kids I taught to kick and breathe under water at two- and three-years-old now swimming laps at five- and -six-years-old. It’s incredibly fulfilling.”
She speaks fondly of her proudest moment at Midtown. A senior member of the club, Walter Fendley, approached Keegan about taking swimming lessons. He had not learned to swim as a child, and as a senior, was still intimidated by the deep end of the pool. His wife, an avid lap swimmer, encouraged Walter to take lessons so he could exercise with her. Walter started private lessons with Keegan in the shallow end of the pool, and eventually progressed to deeper water. Walter is now swimming laps with his wife, and the couple formed a lasting friendship with Keegan.
“All three of us took TNT together last year!” says Keegan.
Pearls and the Purse
When she’s not in the pool or on the paddle courts, Keegan enjoys baking and decorating cakes for her friends. She participated in the Sprint Mini-Triathlon at the club this past May, and loves taking group exercise classes with her friends.
She also told me that in addition to sunscreen, her handbag is never missing her daily planner and three colored Sharpie markers. “I have to stay organized and the markers help me plan my schedule,” says Keegan. “I’m absolutely lost without them.” And speaking of never being without, you’ll be hard-pressed to find Keegan sans pearls. “My sister and I are Irish twins-we’re 14 months apart. My sister wears diamonds, and I wear pearls,” she says. “They’ve been our signature accessory for years.”
A team player both on and off the paddle courts, Keegan firmly believes that as a Midtown associate, she would never ask anyone to do something that she herself wouldn’t do. She credits club manager Bob McKernan for demonstrating this ideal with the way he conducts himself in the club, pitching in to help whenever and wherever he’s needed.
“I truly believe in working hard in order to succeed,” says Keegan, “and sometimes that means working outside your job description.”
Keegan’s hard work on the paddle courts are taking her and her paddle partner to the APTA (American Platform Tennis Association) Nationals on Long Island for the first time this coming March.
Are the pearls coming too?
“Absolutely,” says Keegan.
Next up on our Staff Profile docket: Mind/Body Director Randi Lattimore. Stay tuned!
