Silent Sports Sounds Off

The friends of Nancy Sellars created the Bear Trax 20K trail run to celebrate what they have and memorialize what they’ve lost. Sellars was an enthusiastic runner, cyclist and triathlete killed by an allegedly drunken driver while on a training ride in Racine County on July 10, 2008. Just two weeks after riding in the Race Across America, she died on a leisurely outing near her home in Franklin. The trail run scheduled for April 26 - a day before what would have been Sellars’ 49th birthday - honors her spirit and the connection she had to the trails twisting through the woods surrounding Lapham Peak in the Town of Delafield. “We want to make people aware that this thing we have. To be able to run on the trails, is a special and incredible thing,” said Jimi Sellars, Nancy’s husband of 25 years. “We were road runners for years, then we found out how spiritual it is out there, and it was a natural thing for her.” Cathy Diamond ran the Lapham Peak trails with Nancy Sellars hundreds of times, training for Ironman triathlons, the Border to Border race across northern Minnesota and dozens of endurance events. The hilly terrain was their “cherished ground,” so much so that friends spread a portion of Sellars’ ashes on the paths they enjoyed. After their initial months of mourning, Diamond and others pushed to organize a race to memorialize that connection. Jimi Sellars, struggling with his grief, took a bit of prodding. He eventually came to see the run as an opportunity to remind people of the dangers of drunken driving, and to generate money for the Nancy Sellars Memorial Foundation. The newly created charity will promote safe bicycling, local trails and efforts to reduce drunken driving. Janelle Gehrke, the woman accused of crashing into Nancy Sellars on Five Mile Rd., had a blood-alcohol content of .118 shortly after the collision, according to the criminal complaint in the case. “Drunken driving, you never think it’s going to happen to you,” Jimi Sellars said. “You just don’t think you’re going to be a victim. “That’s not true. I lost my soul mate, just like that, because of a selfish act. We want people to be aware of that.” The Bear Trax 20K will start at 9:30 a.m. on April 26 at the Homestead Hollow at Lapham Peak. Day-of-race registration opens at 8 a.m.

Tags: Syndicated Blog by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Held’s “Off the Couch” blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 11:06 am and is filed under Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.