A few months ago during track season one of my students approached me saying she wanted to do a half marathon for her senior project and she was including all the other girls on the team. She put together a training, nutrition, and stretching plan and then executed it with her teammates. I would meet them early on Saturday mornings and do the longs runs with them.
Saturday we met downtown for the Lifeline of Ohio Half Marathon. I promised the girls I would run with them and make sure they were going to make it the distance. The goal was to run about two hours and one of the girls was wearing a GPS to let us know what our pace was. On a side note—I am not a fan of GPSs. This girl looked at her watch the entire time and never ran by how she felt. At one point I told her to stop being a slave to her watch and just run. The girls are so competitive with each other, too. If one stepped ahead of another they would yell at her and tell her not to speed up. Since this was their first distance race, I’m okay with that, but I’d love to see what they could really do if they were not doing this together.
In the end we finished how we started—in a straight line and as teammates. Our time was 2:02:40. We held hands as we crossed the finish line and congratulated each other. I’m so proud of the girls. I think this will give them wonderful skills and confidence for the upcoming cross country season.
4 comments:
Bravo!
What a great race. You and the girls should be very proud! :)
Congratulations to you all! Great leadership for you and the senior student! How did it feel to run without competing?
Truthfully, it was very hard. I had to constantly tell myself to slow down and that this race wasn't about me. It was also very hard to watch the people I usually run with/against be WAY ahead of me.
congrats! sounds like it was a good exercise in more ways than one (self control, leadership, etc.)
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