THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAT DOOLEY, staff writer
LENGTH: 99 lines
KIM KRASK often spends her days looking after other people.
A wife, mom and intensive-care nurse in Virginia Beach, Krask has focused much of the past decade on nurturing hospital patients and family.
That's kept her on the run, but it hasn't prevented her from gaining nearly 20 pounds - and losing momentum in her efforts to stay in shape.
So when Ladies' Home Journal offered to whisk her off to New York City last fall for a daylong session with a personal trainer - and a rare opportunity to pamper herself - Krask packed her sweat suit and running shoes and headed for the airport.
The result: two pages of photos and text in the magazine's February issue.
Krask, who is 5-foot-2 and weighs about 118 pounds, smiles and calls it her ``15 minutes of fame.''
Thirty days, actually.
The article, titled ``The busy woman's fitness guide,'' popped up on newsstands in mid-January and will be there for another couple of weeks.
The 39-year-old ``Mom on the Move'' appears in royal blue running pants, T-shirt and jacket, doing squats, lunges and abdominal crunches and walking through an autumn park setting.
The unidentified locale is Central Park, not Virginia Beach, and the indoor photos are from Crunches, a celebrated Manhattan gym.
Krask was one of two moms chosen for the article.
The magazine was looking for ``real moms from out there somewhere in the world who wanted to be in shape,'' says Krask, perching on the edge of an easy chair in the family room of her two-story Kempsville home.
Her 3-year-old daughter, Julie, scoots up to the television to watch a cartoon video. Her 6-year-old son, Matthew, intermittently snacks on a bag of chips and tells how he ``helps'' Mom work out.
There is no school this recent day. Matt normally goes to kindergarten five mornings a week; Julie attends preschool on three.
During the day, Krask looks after the children, volunteers at their schools, does the housework and cooks. She also is a ``floater'' for Sentara hospitals, working from 3 to 11 on two or three weekdays and from 7 to 3 on Saturdays.
Her husband, Bob, is an assistant U.S. attorney in Norfolk. The family moved from the Washington, D.C., area about a year ago.
Kim Krask's 38-year-old sister, Melanie - a wife and stay-at-home mother of three who lives in Frederick, Md. - was Kim's connection to fame and fitness.
Melanie was featured last year in a Health magazine article about interval training. When the writer later asked Melanie for some names of moms too busy to work out, she included Kim on her list.
In October, Kim was asked to send a photo to the LHJ office in New York and was interviewed by telephone. She was selected from about a dozen candidates a few days later and was flown to Manhattan.
The petite blonde - she wears a size 6 - wants to lose 10 pounds and improve her muscle tone.
``I was in great shape until I had kids,'' she says.
In her 20s, Krask weighed about 103 and wore a size 2.
She enjoyed running and calisthenics then but found it increasingly difficult to exercise after becoming a mom.
Although she rode an exercycle three or four times a week at home, she didn't have time to join a gym. And her knees will no longer withstand the pounding of running outdoors.
In New York, Krask spent a day with personal trainer Gregory Florez of First Fitness Inc. in Chicago as well as a makeup artist, a writer, two photographers and a photo manager.
Florez designed a weight-training and cardiovascular program Krask could do at home - even when she's with her kids.
For the article, the staff applied her makeup, styled her hair and asked her to perform some of the exercises dozens of times. They took hundreds of photos.
``I must have done about 80 lunges,'' she says with a laugh. ``The next day I could barely walk.''
At home, the routine is more workable, and Krask has stuck with it.
To tone her muscles, she exercises with 5- to 10-pound weights for about 40 minutes three days a week. To burn fat and calories, she walks outdoors or uses her exercycle for about 30 minutes three or four times a week.
Julie sometimes walks with her. Eventually, Matt will be able to join her on bike rides.
Florez encouraged Krask to vary her routine and work out in the mornings so that her metabolism ``would be chugging all day,'' she says.
She's lost 3 pounds - and a dress size.
``I feel a lot better,'' she says. ``I've got a lot more energy.
``I'm surprised to find if I work out in the morning, I'm not tired the rest of the day.''
Several friends around the country have called Krask to say they've seen the article.
A man whose wife reads the magazine recognized Krask in a seminar she attended, and she's even been spotted at the supermarket checkout counter.
``It has been a hoot,'' she says. ``Nothing like this has ever happened to me.'' ILLUSTRATION: LADIES' HOME JOURNAL
Personal trainer Gregory Florez shows Kim Krask how to do squats
correctly in the February issue.
Color photo by Motoya Nakamura/The Virginian-Pilot
Kim Krask, who says,"I was in great shape until I had kids," follows
the exercise program designed for her as Julie, 3, and Matthew, 6,
play nearby.