Friday, September 24, 2010

Girls on The Run

Ok, here is the reveal of my fun adventure from last night....I am a coach for Girls On The Run!!!  I have been really excited to start.  The program is all across the country and it helps girls develop self respect and healthy lifestyles.  The girls are in 3rd-5th grade, an age where positive emotional, social, mental, spiritual and physical development occurs. 

So, how did I feel after an hour with 16 girls?


No, I'm JUST kidding!!  I had a blast!!!!!  The girls were a lot of fun and the other coaches were great.  Here's a link so you can check it out:

http://www.girlsontherun.org/default.html

I'm going to be meeting with them every Tuesday and Thursday for a total of 12 weeks, working toward a 5K at the end of the season.  The girls can walk it, jog it, run it, it doesn't matter.  The goal is to finish and accomplish something great.

Last night the lesson was on changing negative behaviors.  The girls (and coaches!!) had to think about (and share) some negative behaviors we see ourselves doing that we would like to change.  What I was most impressed with was the honesty of the girls.  They just threw it all out there.  I realized that there comes a point when we keep a lot of those things to ourselves, beat ourselves up over negatives, but never share them, own up to them and get them out to throw away!  These girls are learning now to do that NOW and it's really great.  We also took those behaviors on index cards and slam dunked them into the monster box that ate them (we named her Negative Nellie!! - it was a toss up between that and Booger box...what can I say, they ARE in elementary school!!!).  We all cheered the girls on as they threw their negative behaviors away. 


Then, the run.  Ok, the tricky part - I am supposed to walk (according to my doctor's plan for this week), but how could I show up as Coach April the Amazing (yes, we are each assigned a word starting with the first letter of our name!!!) and JUST WALK.  So, I broke out into a slight jog for the run portion.  We did 3 laps around the field behind the school and with each lap announced a new POSITIVE behavior we were going to work on.

It was a really great experience and I'm so thrilled to be a part of it!!!!!

BUT I had the ankle on ice last night when I got home....guess that will be my normal post walk, jog, run routine!!!

Happy Friday everyone!!!  Have a great day!

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