This Monday, the Lake Ridge RidgeRunners celebrate a whole year since avid runner and Patch contributor Stephanie Dupal-Demartin rebooted the RidgeRunners after the club faltered in 2010.

The Anniversary Open House will be at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 7 p.m., and will have food, music, T-shirts, and door prizes. Dupal-Demartin first joined the RidgeRunners in 2006, while she was struggling with a bout of mild depression. 

"Running enabled me to feel alive and well," she wrote. "It was a lifeline, an exercise that filled a void."

But in the fall of 2010, the club stopped meeting regularly at Pizza Gourmet. Then the website was shut down.  Dupal-Demartin couldn't bear to let the club die and organized a meeting on June 25, 2011, to discuss rebooting the club. These efforts were successful, and the club was back on its feet in July 2011.

To learn more about RidgeRunners, visit their website. And consider joining their record-breaking run at 7:30 p.m. June 26 at the Lake Ridge Elementary School parking lot. The club needs more than 35 runners to run on that day to break its group record.