Week 4

Tough week for running as the weather did not cooperate at all. The mom run has been postponed until sometime in April. Hopefully the weather will be better. I hope that everyone has a good spring break. I look forward to seeing everyone in April. Run like a girl!!

Until next time.

Week 3

Free speed!




The girls and I had a really good run Monday. It is easy to see their endurance increasing. Slowly we are decreasing walking time which increases running time. Changing the route every other run adds variation which makes the runs easier too. The girls ability all seems to be fairly similar. All are giving a really good effort to do what we ask them to do. Giving them little catch phrases here and there seems to be fun for them too. For every hill we run down we all say "free speed". Always run down a hill instead of walk, even if you're tired. They also like warm up "butt kicks".

After the run we talked a bit about healthy relationships with ourselves. They answered questions in their journals about their support systems at home, things that make them happy and things that scare them. Everybody participated even though they weren't required to. The word game that we do as soon as we finish the run is a popular activity. Most of the descriptive words about running now are about how good they feel and less about how exhausted they are.

I hope to see some family members out at our run next week. I think that it is important for girls to see their parents being active.

Until next time.

Run Like a Girl

I think that girls have it tough in middle school. It is difficult for them to really know who they are and act authentically and appropriately. Running will hopefully give them some self confidence to make good safe life choices. We spend some time after the run discussing how we fuel during the run and when we are finished. The girls write on the board some words to describe it. They all like to take their turn writing. While we run they are also thinking of adjectives to describe the run itself.

The first week, only a small number of girls came out. The second week of running, the numbers doubled. With two high school girls to help and 10 runners, the group is quite dynamic. I lengthened the run on Monday, and it turned out to be a little too long. The second running day was much better. We had snacks that day too. Snacks was one of the drawing features of the group.
Until next week.