ATHENAS JOIN FORCES IN NASHVILLE FOR 6K TEAM TREK AND 15K RACE ON AUGUST 28 Women can run, walk, even dance at the new 6K Athena Team Trek in Nashville this month. It's part of a racing series to benefit Project Athena Foundation & help women get their "mojo" back.
NASHVILLE, Tenn, (August 9, 2010) – There will be hundreds of Athenas in Nashville in a few weeks, thanks to Project Athena Foundation. And its goal is to provide free event registrations to survivors of serious illness injury.
A new run/walk event with dance moves and twist-and-shout team-building enthusiasm is the 6K Athena Team Trek, being held Sat, Aug 28 at Nashville's Percy Warner Park. It is one of three events in the AKALI® Project Athena Racing Series that same day. All event proceeds will benefit the Project Athena Foundation, which feels right at home in a city that boasts a full-scale 42-foot replica of the Athena statue from ancient Greece in one of its downtown parks.
The main event is a timed run on a road course in Percy Warner Park, the 15K God/Goddess Race. A new 6K Athena Team Trek is an adventure event exclusively for women, in teams of two to six participants. And for children 12 and under, there is a Merrell Mini Athena & Mini Zeus Kidz Challenge. All participants receive Merrell Tech shirts and a unique performance medal with detachable Athena charm.
Designed as a cross between a scavenger hike and a camaraderie experience, the 6K Athena Team Trek is exclusively for women. At activity stations along the route, the teams will encounter challenges, from dancing the Electric Slide to twirling hula hoops to posing in a photo contest. In Nashville there will also be a Human Scrabble challenge, where teams will get an assortment of giant letters with which to create words in three minutes using a theme, like “bands of the 70s and 80s”.
The founder and Minister of Dreams at the Project Athena Foundation is Robyn Benincasa, and she created the 6K event specifically to help women returning to fitness from serious illness or injury, like herself. In 2007 the San Diego adventure racer and firefighter was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disorder, and had two surgeries to replace sections of her hips. Project Athena Foundation helps women who face medical setbacks to embrace recovery and conquer physical fitness goals.
“The vibe of the Athena Team Trek was inspired by the popular fundraising walks for causes like cancer research. The Athena Team Trek can be done in an hour or two, with a ton of fun photo ops and team challenges along the way. The goal is to have your girlfriends around you, walking, laughing and enjoying the day, and to have everyone finish with a big smile and ask when they can do it again,” stated Benincasa, who was able to pose with the Athena statue in Nashville's Parthenon on a recent trip to Nashville.
“Discovering that I had end-stage osteoarthritis in both hips was a bit of a shock, but it definitely made me think about all of those amazing survivors out there. I relied on my best pals to keep me active with adventure racing and ultra-running, and all of them have overcome serious illness too, including
