Girls On The Run

by Bill
(PA)

I discovered Girls On The Run

It is important to use what you have to help others, People who think like that Inspire me. As I was planning out a training schedule for my marathon, I was looking up races locally and saw a 5K called "New Balance Girls On the Run 5K", my curiosity was peeked.

Girls on the Run® is a life-changing, experiential learning programs for girls age eight to thirteen years old. The programs combine training for a 3.1 mile running event with self-esteem enhancing, uplifting workouts.

My Daughter is begging me to take her running

The goals of the programs are to encourage positive emotional, social, mental, spiritual and physical development. That being said, I thought, cool my daughter is begging me to take her running with me, and she is in the 5th grade. So I shot an email to the director asking if they were starting one in her school and if my painting business could be a sponsor at the race(As I read about this program, I firmly believe it has a relevant place in our schools)

So the director replied back and said there was room for me to volunteer as well. They asked me to consider being an assistant coach at my daughters school. Little did I know several months later I would be running a 5K in a hot pink shirt, but I am getting ahead of myself.

A duck out of water

So I go to the Coaches meeting and it's like me and 30 beautiful women! Lucky me. They loved me, being the only "Mancoach" in our chapter. What I realize is that parents today, do not invest and give back to their kids, demands on work, and life in general makes it easier to drop our kids off at a practice and pick them up later.

Well this time I carved out a couple of afternoons in my schedule for 13 weeks to hang out with my daughter and her cackling, shrieking, giddy, silly and just plain loud friends, 15 girls, a couple of female coaches and me. Can you say Duck out of water? I adjusted fairly quickly and got to really get to know these girls, and have some amazing stories to prove it.

I love this program

This program teaches these girls things they need to know to tackle the world with a positive attitude. Along the way, we did fun running games and laps around our track. The whole program ends with a 5K with clubs from a bunch of schools in our chapter. 200 little girls to be exact.

I was mortified at first when they handed me a pink shirt to wear for the race, whaaaaat? ok so I guess real men wear pink! I did put it on, and I did smear body glide generously across my nippleage region (again I shamelessly plug Coach Carvey's nipple story.) which you can find a link to on his home page.

My goal was to run through the course as fast as I could within my pace. But they handed me a camera and said take pictures of our schools team as they run by. Not an easy task, as I was in the back at the starting gate, and couldn't get past a lot of the crowds as the course was narrow.

Kate Gosselin running?

Oh funny side note, as we are heading to the starting line, one of my fellow coaches says , look over there, it's Kate Gosselin from Kate plus 8, you know the one who totally sucked at dancing with the stars recently. Well her daughter is in the program, so she ran it with her, and her body guard was there too. The gossip columns had a field day with someones, cell phone video of Kate running. Ok Family race, teaching kids about self esteem and not worrying what others think of you and here comes Kate in a sports bra and running tights. Like I said they had a field day.

A proud papa

Anyway, my daughter ran her first 5K, I am a proud papa, I don't know how much I ran or how fast I ran, as I ran back and forth encouraging our girls to finish the race. At one point I got to run one of our girls to the finish line hand in hand. To see the look on the girls faces as they crossed the finish line was truly amazing.

Now my 4 year old daughter says she loves to run and wants to go "jogging" with daddy. you ever push a dang Jogging stroller? Well if you have, good for you! not an easy task. So, now I am hooked, I love running and I love this organization. I will be helping out for a very long time. Gotta get out and run,so talk to ya soon.