Bend No. 6 among America’s ‘Most Fitness-Friendly Cities’

This may leave some critics fit to be tied, but Bend just made another Top 10 list, this time coming in No. 6 in a ranking out Saturday of the “Most Fitness-Friendly Cities in America.”

As with other such lists, they compared “metro areas,” which in Bend’s case actually encompasses all of Deschutes County. Still, a No. 6 ranking on fitness fits with the image of the region as a whole.

This time it comes via the Huffington Post and SmartAsset.com, the latter of which says its goal is “helping people make smarter financial decisions.”

“These are the places with an abundance of personal trainers and fitness coaches, with plenty of yoga studios and climbing walls and lacking in the calorific temptations that can throw a great fitness plan off course (guess they’ve never been to Dandy’s, Pilot Butte Drive-In, etc.;-)

This was not another “vote for the city you like” survey either, as this ranking was based on some actual, federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data.

First, they analyzed the people, calculating the ratio of fitness professionals (among them trainers, dieticians, dancers and sports coaches) to the total workforce.

As for the places, they calculated the ratio of “fitness-friendly employers” (fitness and rec centers, sporting goods stores, and sports and recreation instruction) to the total number of employers in the city/metro area.

The third category: fast food. “How available are unhealthy eating options?” they asked. So they calculated the ratio of “limited-service restaurants” to total employers in the area. A limited service restaurant does not offer table service; instead one orders from a counter or drive-through window.

Ranking nearly 370 metro areas, they scored each city based on its average ranking, with tops in all three categories a perfect 100.

Bend fared best in fitness facilities, No. 9 among them all, while it was 26th in the fitness professionals ranking and 45th in the fast food ranking, for an overall score of No. 6 and an index of 93.22 out of 100.

Bend was one of four Northwest cities to crack the Top 10 and was hailed by the list-makers for being “known as a haven for outdoor sports enthusiasts.” And as is often the case, Bend was touted as having “more annual sunshine” than its “rainier coastal neighbors, leaving “fewer excuses to stay inside on the couch.”

And then an eyebrow-raising factoid: “Bend has the highest metro-area concentration of sporting goods retailers of any city in America, with an incredible 42 stores serving a metro area of about 150,000 people.”

Whoa — 42 sporting goods stores in Deschutes County? How does that definition work? It’s a Census Bureau thing, of course — Smart Assets just crunched the feds’ numbers in its formula.

No. 1 this time was a city Bend often shares such lists or comparisons with — Boulder, Colorado, followed by Bellingham, Washington, Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut, Missoula, Montana, and Wenatchee, Washington.

Below Bend rounding out the Top 10 were Burlington, Vermont, Charlottesville, Virginia, Fort Collins-Loveland, Colorado and Corvallis at No. 10.

See the rest of the Top 25 and how they all are described at the article linked here.