ready, set... Be Bold!

By Tim Forsberg
Posted 5/5/16

This summer, if Lynn Hall has her way, the old Rocky Point jingle, “Come with your family, come with your friends,” will take on a whole new meaning as she looks to make the park a place where …

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ready, set... Be Bold!

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This summer, if Lynn Hall has her way, the old Rocky Point jingle, “Come with your family, come with your friends,” will take on a whole new meaning as she looks to make the park a place where people can once again “come alive.”

Hall is a certified personal and group trainer who has a passion for helping people achieve goals. A married mother of three with a long history of working with local non-profit organizations, she is the owner and founder of BoldrDash, an event company that produces Rhode Island obstacle courses for all ages.

After completing a Spartan race in 2010, Hall saw an opportunity to create an all-inclusive event in which anyone from elite athletes to novices would be challenged, so that participants would experience the exhilaration of accomplishment.

She formed BoldrDash, a 5K race that incorporates obstacles of varying difficulty throughout the course. With tube crawls, parallel bars, tire hurdles, rope climbs, monkey bars, wobble boards and more, the event offers challenges unseen elsewhere.

“I am a trainer. I truly believe that by bringing people together, you get something,” Hall said. “I believe that moving and getting out you find out what your body is capable of, and your body helps make your mind more capable, and you can accomplish great, great things.”

However, Hall takes her venture another step further. Her BoldrDash races allow local charities to host events to raise money for their cause. She not only hopes to assist benefit organizations monetarily, she believes in her partner’s missions and supports their causes.

“I’ve been in the non-profit industry since I was 18. I worked in group homes, I worked in school systems, and I’ve worked with drug addicts and the homeless,” she said. “I always said that if I could get to that point in my life that I could do something on my own that I would.”

Now, she’s taking her production to Rhode Island’s playground – Rocky Point – and is hoping to “wow” the community with an event that will be bigger, better, and draws on the amusement park’s past.

“I’m a native Rhode Islander, so I loved Rocky Point. I grew up going there every year. We’re excited to sort of be the first really big production at the park,” Hall said. “Obviously, last year’s Chamber of Commerce movie nights were a huge production, as was their Rocky Point 5K. But we’d like to bring that feeling back of what Rocky Point was.”

Hall’s Rocky Point BoldrDash event is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 10. Depending on the level of participation, the event may be extended to Sunday, as she has approval to host the event for the weekend.

“We looked at the park map and what I would really like to do is where the Corkscrew was, I want our over and under wall so you feel like you're on a roller coaster,” Hall said. “We’re going to build something new that’s going to be sort of just side walls, like a little maze, maybe try and put that where the haunted house was, because it will be dark on top. We’ve got the tunnels that will act like the Flume. We’re trying to really think about those really big park icons that everybody remembers, and how do we emulate it out there and kind of bring that feel back.”

Plans for the event include amusement park signage, with displays of the park’s former rides and games, so that as one goes through the course they will get a sense of what was once there.

“The other thing we want to do is find where Kiddie Land was and get as close as we can to that spot, and do a kids event there. I think we can do it,” Hall said.

Typically, their races – like their signature events at Scarborough and Misquamicut beaches – draw about 1,200 participants, but she’s hopeful for a much larger Rocky Point crowd.

“Our biggest concern is making sure that we don’t impact the community in a negative way through traffic, so we’re going to have traffic control and are in the process of talking with the police department in a sense of what do we need and how do we do this,” she said. “We’re talking with Lauren Slocum from the Chamber of Commerce, and now we’re a sponsor for the Rocky Point 5K and all of the movie nights as the communications sponsor, so we’ll be at most everything that’s happening at Rocky Point all summer long and try to get as involved as we can so people will see us and know us. We have a long history of working with the state, cleaning up after ourselves, protecting the environment, and working well with all of the entities that are involved. We want to run a fun, safe, family-friendly event.”

In addition to the race, Hall will bring in other popular amenities, including local food trucks that will serve amusement park-themed fare. She has partnered with the Rocky Point Foundation, with the hopes of bringing awareness to the park’s preservation and use. She’s also using the opportunity to further a mission of her own newly-formed non-profit.

“I have a non-profit that I started in December called Find Your Bold. It’s increasing self-worth and self-esteem through physical activity and human interaction. It’s literally just getting off the ground, we’ve raised the funds to open, and we’re going from there,” Hall said. “Our goal is to basically partner with as many other organizations and companies as we can so that we can bring either events to people or people to events.”

Hall said BoldrDash attempts to make everything about the race attainable and that, regardless of skill level, there’s something for every participant.

“When we build a wall, we build a wall that one side has no help needed to get over, another side has a couple of cleats to get over, and a third side has steps all the way up and down both sides,” she said. “Our goal is 100 percent completion, and we do not make it impossible. You can make it impossible for yourself if you want to challenge yourself. People are out there to laugh at themselves and their friends, have a really good time, possibly overcome a fear or two, and just grow from the experience.”

Hall has a team of five that assists with constructing the course and will take in many volunteers to help with its completion. They’ve put out a call for volunteers, and interested parties may visit their website, boldrdashrace.com, to register as either a participant or volunteer.

“I can’t wait to do something there. I can’t wait to get that feeling back. When they reopened the park, it’s beautiful, but it’s not Rocky Point,” Hall said. “It’s beautiful, it’s open space, it’s a gorgeous spot, but it’s not that exciting, ‘I can’t wait to go there tomorrow with my family and play all day.’ I can’t wait to bring that back there – you know, that stomach-turning feeling when you pull in and saw the rides and were like, ‘We’re here!’ [That] type of feeling, I want that.”

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