A crowd of seniors cheered as each person neared the finish line after a short walk around Skyline Park in Tooele City on Wednesday.
The seniors were participating in the Golden Mile, a biannual event started last fall, said Bella Colovich, manager of the Tooele, Grantsville and Wendover senior centers.
“We want to be part of the county’s movement to be healthy,” she said. “We’re always trying to look for new activities, and somebody had suggested doing a walk or a run. … We decided to call it the ‘Golden Mile’ because of their golden years.”
Advertising for the event was a joint effort from the Live Fit Coalition and Tooele County Health Department, she said. Colovich believed the ad in the Transcript Bulletin drew more people than just the seniors who frequent the city senior centers.
Overall, about 42 seniors participated in the event.
“It went wonderfully,” Colovich said. “It was such beautiful weather. We had a couple of seniors that were actually running through the trail. They did it at their own pace. We had some walking with their canes; we had some doing several loops. We had a wonderful time.”
Debbie Winn, Tooele Senior Center Lead, said the crowd was the biggest one so far.
The majority of the people in attendance came from Tooele, but some drove from the Grantsville Senior Center or their homes in Tooele County, Winn said.
Woody Watts, 81, of Stansbury Park, participated in Wednesday’s walk. He said one of the longest walks he’s ever done was a 22-mile hike through Middle Canyon to the Oquirrh Mountain LDS Temple three years ago.
“I still feel like I did when I was 50,” he said, citing a healthy diet and consistent exercise as two reasons for his good physical health.
In addition to hiking, Watts also began learning to ballroom dance after his wife died two years ago. The dancing helped him come to terms with his grief, he said.