Getting in the greatest shape of (or for) your life.

Getting in shape is the great American New Year’s resolution—and these days, any number of health-related organizations are eager to help. The catch is, you have to do a little fundraising in return for the freebie. But if you’re having trouble getting off that comfortable couch, signing on with an organization that fights cancer, AIDS, or another devastating disease just may motivate you into motion.

The sequence is simple: Choose an event, sign up, get trained (with the help of experts) and get pledges, then get out there and complete the run/bike/swim/ski/hike/triathalon with verve.

“Everyone needs something to get going. To know that you’re doing it for someone else is a huge motivator. We have watched so many women be transformed by the experience,” says Lori Shannon, president of See Jane Run (the local women’s athletic clothing store chain), which holds regular free run clubs for beginning and experienced runners.

Here are just a few of the many local options for anyone looking to tone up and do good at the same time.

Go Team

“There’s a reason they call them endurance events,” says Lior Jacober, 54, an Oakland elementary school teacher. Diagnosed in 1987 with lymphoma, a recurring blood cancer, Jacober has been involved with the nonprofit Team in Training organization for the past 15 years as an athlete, motivational speaker, and even a financial aid recipient. To date, she’s completed a cross-country ski marathon in Anchorage and marathon hikes in the Grand Canyon and Kauai. “Getting through anything—through cancer, through chemo, losing someone to blood cancer—those are all endurance events,” she says.

Ride revolution: Maya Stein rode her bike for 545 miles on the AIDS/LifeCycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles three years ago. In this recent self-portrait, she is raising money for Hillel at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Photo courtesy Maya Stein.

Team in Training, a fundraising branch of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, follows a different model than similar organizations. Rather than staging its own events, the White Plains, N.Y.–based nonprofit prepares participants to compete in athletic endurance competitions around the world: half marathons, marathons, triathlons, 100-mile bike rides, cross-country ski marathons, and endurance hikes. Participants have access to certified coaches, training, sports education clinics, fundraising mentors, and more than 60 accredited annual events, many in exotic locales in the United States and abroad.

Jacober, the single mother of son Eli, now 21, says that she has always been physically active. “I was captain of the gymnastics team in high school,” she says. “I would jog a few miles to be in shape. I wasn’t afraid of doing scary and fun athletic things that my friends were doing, like going to a marble quarry, swinging from a rope on a tree, and leaping 40 feet into the water.”

But in 2005, to her surprise—she was in a post-treatment slump and feeling her age—Jacober signed up for her second Team in Training event as a fundraising participant (the Tour of Anchorage ski marathon) and “got in the best shape of my life.” Though still a teenager at the time, her son received organizational permission to participate in the Anchorage event, too. “I trained for four and a half months,” Jacober says. “I used the calendar and the diet and the workout. This turned me around wonderfully.” And, she says, the team’s coaches “really know how to make training fun. We even played Sharks and Minnows—on skis.”

Trained to be tough: Lior Jacober of Oakland, who suffers from lymphoma, motivates Team in Training participants as they prepare for a 2009 ski competition in Wyoming. Photo courtesy Lior Jacober.

Jacober wasn’t aware of it at the time, but near the end of the training season, she had what she now calls a “nasty” recurrence of her lymphoma. “Somehow I skied 25 kilometers with two kinds of Stage IV cancers,” she says.

Later, while undergoing grueling chemotherapy, Jacober says she thought: “I can do this; I just skied a marathon.”

Spinning wheels

Three years ago, Maya Stein decided to tackle the AIDS/LifeCycle bike ride just because she loves a challenge—and what else would you call 545 miles and seven days of pedaling the California coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles? It wasn’t until she began seriously training and raising money that she started feeling motivated by the cause.

“I love doing things that might be impossible. The physical aspect was the most compelling for awhile. [But] as I started training, I thought more about what I was riding for,” says Stein, a 39-year-old writer who recently moved to western Massachusetts from San Francisco.

AIDS/LifeCycle is a fully supported bike ride—not a race—supporting the HIV/AIDS-related services of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. First held in 1994—then known as the California AIDS Ride—the ride is now in its 11th year as AIDS/LifeCycle. Since its inception in 2002, AIDS/LifeCycle has raised more than $70 million to fight AIDS. The ride also raises awareness about HIV/AIDS and the need for services as the number of people living with the disease continues to grow.

Each participant is asked to raise a minimum of $3,000. Stein managed to raise $5,500 through methods both traditional and creative. An accomplished cook, she hosted a collaborative cooking night where 18 people paid $40 each to help prepare a meal they then enjoyed together, and later an Iron Chef–like contest where three teams of chefs had to use a secret ingredient (basil) in every dish from cocktails to dessert. Guests paid $20 to attend, and then entered a raffle to win a dinner for four prepared by one of the chefs.

Though raising at least $3,000 is a challenge, learning to ride about 85 miles a day can definitely kick the posterior, too. Stein, who had already successfully finished a 100-mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe with Team in Training, trained mostly on her own but closely followed AIDS/LifeCycle’s official training program and timeline. “It’s really more about learning how to be on the bike for that long,” Stein says.

Stein says the sense of community carried her through the event. “No matter what, you are not alone,” she says, referring to the 2,100 other riders huffing up hills all around her. She also credits the spectators along the way, remembering one woman holding a sign reading, “You are riding for me.”

“It becomes a very personal thing,” Stein says. “There were these moments when I was indescribably happy. I found a lot of peace through the experience.”

Walk the Walk

Golden gait: Oakland resident Mark Donahue and his daughter, Elinor (age 5), completed the San Francisco AIDS Walk together last summer. Photo courtesy Mark Donahue.

Last summer, Oakland resident Mark Donahue pushed a stroller through Golden Gate Park for his third AIDS Walk San Francisco. Attending to his 5-year-old daughter’s snack needs slowed him down some (luckily there are stations for food, plus belly dancing, swing dancing, and performances by the Cal and Stanford bands), but since it’s not a timed walk, he found the experience just as rich.

“There is such a great sense of camaraderie,” says Donahue, a 48-year-old architect with three children. “They are all pushing for the same cause. The spirit is something you don’t really encounter in day-to-day life.”

Founded in 1987, the 10-kilometer walk drew about 25,000 walkers last July, raising over $3 million to support local HIV prevention, testing, and care services of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and 48 other Bay Area AIDS organizations.

One of his favorite parts of the experience, Donahue says, was asking friends and acquaintances for pledges, “When you tell people, ‘I really appreciate you pledging,’ they say, ‘You’ve got it backward. I appreciate you walking,’” he says.

Inspired by friends in the gay, lesbian, and transgender community who have been affected by HIV and AIDS, Donahue raised $1,300 last year and hopes to raise $2,500 this year. Because the walk is not competitive or particularly grueling, Donahue does not do any direct training for the event. He does, however, try to work more exercise into his work day.

“If I have a meeting within 15 blocks of the office, I’m going to walk,” says Donahue, who works in San Francisco’s financial district. “The AIDS Walk is a reminder of why that’s important to do.”

Avon calling

Ceci Bowman, 45, and her sister Claire Enright, both of Berkeley, completed the 2011 San Francisco Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in honor of their mother, Millie Hurd, who died of the disease in 1979. “She got sick when I was in first grade and died at the end of seventh grade,” says Bowman, a freelance designer and the mother of three boys. “I don’t have that much memory of her being really well. I hope we find a cure so families don’t have to go through this horrible thing.”

Sponsored by the Avon Foundation for Women’s Health, last year’s San Francisco walk drew 2,000 walkers—both women and men, healthy and ill—and raised $4.2 million, much of it awarded to Bay Area programs and services. East Bay recipients included the Alameda County Medical Center ($250,000), and the Women’s Cancer Resource Center and Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic, both in Oakland ($125,000 each).

Slated this year for the July 7-8 weekend, the two-day, 39-mile walk takes participants from downtown San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, into the scenic landscape of Marin County—and, of course, back again. Avon offers training schedules to help walkers figure out how many weeks or months they will need to train, as well as volunteer-led training walks at sites around the Bay Area. It’s also possible to do the walk in a location other than the Bay Area—the organization conducts walks in eight other cities around the United States.

Compared to, say, an Ironman, a two-day walk may not sound like much of a challenge for those already in good shape. But, says Bowman, an athletic woman who attends spin class or runs several times a week, endurance walking is a whole different game. “Frankly, I probably wasn’t as well-prepared as I should have been,” she says.

“Cardiovascularly, I was in good shape, but this is a different kind of workout. You have to maintain. They don’t let you run. You do see people kind of blowing it, walking too fast and then having to drop out.”

There’s no competitive “machismo” among the walkers, Bowman says, but some physical discomfort is par for the course. “Wearing good shoes and good socks is a really big deal,” she says. “If you get blisters, you just have to suffer through.” And she warns walkers not to succumb to the temptation to rest for too long—“if you sit for more than five minutes, your body just kind of freezes up and it’s hard to go on.”

Then there’s a challenge of another sort: asking people for money. Each Avon walker is required to raise $1,800 in pledges, and although the organization coaches walkers to be comfortable in a fundraising role, hitting friends up for donations—even for the proverbial good cause—can still be a hurdle. Bowman doesn’t plan to participate in the walk in 2012, in part because she’s reluctant to ask her supporters for contributions again so soon. But, she says, she’ll be back. “It’s an incredible experience,” she says, “well worth the work, and the weirdness of asking for money. It’s a very worthwhile uncomfortableness.”

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Editor and writer Stephen Weldon, who resolves to sweat more this year, divides his time between Oakland and Berkeley.

Training for a Cause

THE WORKOUTS
Whether you’re in it to support a loved one or just to shape up, there’s an event you can train for locally. Following, our short list of options to get you started.
AIDS/LifeCycle (545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles), June 3-9, (415) 581-7079; aidslifecycle.org.
AIDS Walk San Francisco (10K walk in San Francisco), July 15, (415) 615-9255; aidswalk.net/sanfran.
American Heart Association Heart Walk (5K walk/run in Oakland), Sept. 20, (510) 904-4000; heartwalkbayarea.org.
American Cancer Society Relay for Life (various relay events year-round), relayforlife.org.
Avon Walk for Breast Cancer (39-mile walk from San Francisco), July 7-8, (415) 834-8404; avonwalk.org/san-francisco.
Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, (877) 465-6636; komen.org.
Team in Training, (415) 581-1166; teamintraining.org/sf.
Women’s Cancer Resource Center, Swim a Mile for Women with Cancer (Mills College, Oakland), Oct. 6-7, (510) 601-4040; wcrc.org/swim.

SHOES AND SUCH
LaFoot Plus, 2917 College Ave., Berkeley, (510) 644-3668; lafoot.com.
Living Lean (Sheena Lakhotia, personal trainer), 1955 Mountain Blvd., Ste. 103, Oakland; 2 Theater Square, Orinda; 145 E. Prospect, Danville; (925) 360-7051; thelivingleanprogram.com.
See Jane Run, 5815 College Ave., Oakland, (510) 428-2681; seejanerun.com. (Sponsors summer half-marathon and 5K to raise funds for Girls Inc. in Alameda.)
Sports Basement, 1881 Ygnacio Valley Road, Walnut Creek, (925) 941-6100; plus other locations in San Francisco and Sunnyvale; sportsbasement.com.
TranSports, 6014 College Ave., Oakland, (510) 655-4809; 1559 Solano Ave., Berkeley, (510) 528-8405; transportsrunswim.com.