R. T. Rybak, mayor of MinneapolisArmed with a list of the top 100 reasons why the mayor of Minneapolis should agree to be mspmag.com’s February Health Nut, we stormed city hall, prepared to beg, plead, and grovel our way into R. T. Rybak’s office. Thankfully, Rybak is one of the nicest guys around, and he let us off easy—with only a promise that we would mention Minneapolis’s good, clear, clean tap water.
Read how Mayor Rybak went from swapping his addiction of smoking with that of exercise—cold turkey. In fact, today he is so in shape that Fitness Magazine named him the Fittest Mayor In America. Not bad for a guy who described himself as once being “kind of a load.”
Q: When did you first get involved in being active/exercise?
A: I grew up as a kid in sports but took up smoking in high school and college, and I became kind of a load. I quit smoking on August 8, 1979, and I replaced that addiction with exercise. It was a good trade.
Q: How did you get back in shape?
A: I started off by running, which I now do relatively little of because I don’t think I have the knees for it. Mostly what I do now is train for triathlons in the summer and cross-country ski in the winters. I try to do a little of a lot.
Q: What do you wish you had known when you first started getting in shape?
A: The connection between diet and exercise. I eat very healthy, local food. And I want more people to go to the Midtown Global Market—and the farmers’ markets—and support local growers because it also helps keep them healthier. I also drink lots of good, clear, clean Minneapolis tap water by the gallon. If our bodies are engines, we should care what gasoline we put in them. Too often I see people do a great workout and then sit down with a bag of Doritos and a Coke.
Q: What is your favorite form of exercise?
A: To me there is nothing better than a beautiful Minneapolis day swimming in Lake Calhoun. I’ll swim half a mile or so. I grew up near Lake Harriet and considered myself a lucky kid who could walk to a place where we could swim. As mayor, I have no control over the park board, but I hope someday they will allow more places to swim in the lakes and bring back the diving docks. Bring the fun back that was lost by people thinking more about litigation than recreation.
Q: What advice do you have for people looking to get in shape?
A: Get up, move around, and don’t worry about what you look like, how fast you’re going, or what somebody else says. Too many people worry about somebody else’s standards.
Q. As a mayor, you put on many fitness events. Why is this?
A: I want people in Minneapolis and around the world to see this as a place where people get off the couch and active in the most beautiful urban environment in the world. No other city has the park amenities we do.
Q: As we are in the middle of winter, what is your favorite winter sport?
A: As a kid growing up, I didn’t do any winter sports. But cross-country skiing right now makes me love winter. A few weekends ago, I was out cross-country skiing at Wirth Park, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Q: When you train, what are your favorite trails to hit? Or in this weather, do you go inside?
A: I love to bike to work around the lakes, Kenilworth Trail, down the Greenway, too. My wife and I love everything about Theodore Wirth Park. The ski trails, mountain bike trails, the quaking bog, and the wildflower garden. To be part of that and then turn a corner and see our skyline is completely unique to American cities.
Q: What is your favorite race?
A: My two favorites are the City of Lakes Ski Loppet and the Life Time Triathlon (the sprint course). Outside Minneapolis, I like the Governor’s Cup Ski Race at Fort Ripley and the triathlon in Buffalo, both of which are small-scale races on beautiful courses.
Q: You mention the City of Lakes Ski Loppet. How did this get going?
A: I was coming back with some friends from the Birkebeiner, seeing all these Minnesotans coming back from Hayward, Wisconsin, and said we should start a race in the city. I put out a challenge: Let’s start the first urban cross-country ski race in the country. Out of that came the City of Lakes Ski Loppet.
Q: What has been your best finish?
A: I’m never that fast. I kicked off a race once, and I asked all the participants to turn around. I said, ‘Now I can see the view of the race I’ll see.’ I had this fantasy that once I hit fifty, I would do better in my age group. What I didn’t realize was all the lame people dropped out; I was the one lame person who stayed in.
Q: In terms of local notables who are also healthy, whom do you admire?
A: Supreme Court Justice Allen Page is a huge runner. I also admire Betsy Hodges, a City Council member, who lost a lot of weight more than twenty years ago and has kept it off.
Q: What is your overall goal for fitness in Minneapolis (more parks, trails, etc.? More people involved?)
A. The people of Minneapolis are more fit than other cities. But this is not good enough when obesity among young people is an epidemic. I want people to have two exercises:
1. Take your arms, and push yourself away from the table.
2. Then take your legs, and get outside in the most beautiful city in America.
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