Dameon Jackson reacts to the cold air as Christy Turner exits the pool after last year’s Polar Bear Plunge. / Tribune file photo
CULLMAN – Cullman Parks and Recreation (CP&R) is gearing up to start the new year with a week full of promotions and activities at the Cullman Wellness and Aquatic Center (CWAC). Starting Monday, Jan. 1, Community Wellness Week will be in full swing. This year, CP&R expanded the event from just one day to an entire week, with added features.
Waid Harbison, director of marketing, programs and events for CP&R, is excited to see the event grow.
“Basically, in the past we have done a Community Wellness Day on the first Saturday in January and we just wanted to expand it to a full week this year,” Harbison said. “Jan. 6 will kind of be our big day; we’ll have the Polar Bear Plunge that day where people jump into the pool and have a chance to win a free membership. We’ll have free admission for the whole day and giveaways and that sort of stuff and of course memberships will be $50 off that whole week.”
Harbison has been involved in the Polar Bear Plunge for a few years now and has seen crowds of people come out to dive into those frigid waters in hopes of taking home a free year-long family membership to CWAC.
“The Polar Bear Plunge will be at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, the 6th and that’s always an awesome, fun time where people get to jump in and get a chance to win a free membership. If you jump in, we will enter you into a drawing and it’s pretty good odds if there’s only 40 or 50 people that day,” Harbison said. “We normally have somewhere between 40 and 70 people show up, but it just depends on the weather. Last year we had a lower turnout, the pool temperature was cold; it was about (46) degrees, but the temperature on the pool deck was about (21) degrees, so it was one of the coldest days of the year. Right now, the pool temperature is about 39 degrees so it’s not too, bad but it’s getting really cold this week, so it could be lower by next Saturday. Some people have done it regularly every year since we’ve done it, and we’ve actually done it every year since the facility opened and it’s been as low as 21 degrees in the pool and as high as 50 degrees.”
In the week leading up to the Polar Bear Plunge, the Aquatic Center will have several activities and promotions going on from free classes to health vendors and more.
“What we’re going to be doing during the week is first of all we will have the $50 off memberships going for the whole week. That was so popular in the past that we thought we would expand upon that this year,” Harbison said. “We’re going to do some giveaways for our members which is something new we haven’t done before. We have some cool water bottles, pedometers, T-shirts, just fitness-oriented stuff like that. We’ll have some people like Alpha Nutrition and GNC come in and have some giveaways and free tastings so it’s going to be kind of a member-oriented week.”
Harbison continued, “On Saturday we’ll have basically the same setup that we’ve used in the past. We’ll have free admission for anyone who wants to come that day, some free fitness classes that we have so that people coming in for free that day can try one out if they want to and we’ll also have a health fair going up and down the hallway. A lot of different people will be there, we’ll have the hospital there doing health screenings, we’ll have a massage therapist there, GNC and Weight Watchers will be there, so anything related to health and wellness we’ll have there for the health fair.”
At a glance
Community Wellness Week Jan. 1-6 at the Cullman Wellness and Aquatic Center
$50 off memberships all week
Member giveaways
Saturday, Jan. 6
Polar Bear Plunge at 10:30 a.m.
Free Health Fair
Free admission all day
More info: http://cullmanrecreation.org/
Copyright 2017 Humble Roots, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
