Running Club Has a 'Wicked' Good Following

Wicked Running Club Co-founder Mike Toomey has a following in Salem, and it keeps getting bigger.

Toomey is teaching a half-marathon and marathon training clinic that currently has 60 runners.  The clinic, put on by Toomey and the Salem Parks and Recreation Department, teaches conditioning, speed running, and nutrition. Participants are training for either a marathon or half-marathon in November.

Toomey started teaching the running clinics in 2006.  He also founded Wicked Running Club  in 2004 with Doug Bollen, the director of Salem recreation.  In four years, the club has grown to more than 200 members, Toomey said.

"These clinics definitely spurred that on," Toomey said. "We started with like 10 or 15 people."

Tim Short, the current president of Wicked Running Club, said the group is welcoming and encourages all levels of runners to join.

"We're a great group of people; we're very inclusive," Short said. "We want everyone to come and join us."

Many of the runners taking Toomey's clinic are women.  They outnumber men in the class by about 50 to 10, he said.

Prior to a Thursday evening clinic at Forest River Park, runner Lisa Tobin from Lynn said she hasn't decided if she's going to do a marathon yet.

"I haven't run a marathon yet," Tobin said. "That's why I'm here, so that I can like it as much as possible."

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