26 Girls On The Run!

This week is my third week coaching Girls On The Run! It has been so much fun and I'm really glad I got involved in the program. I originally signed up to be a coach in Balboa Park near my apartment (and 45 minutes from work), but the week before we started the coaching director asked if I'd consider coaching at a location closer to my work since they had two of us who wanted to be head coach in Balboa Park, but no one who could do it in Carmel Valley. I figured it would probably be safer to have a location closer to work since my drive home varies in duration (thanks to the unpredictable traffic) so I agreed to become the head coach for Carmel Valley!

Registration The First Day

Prior to starting our season, the director had mentioned that Carmel Valley ended up with a significantly higher number of participants than the other locations. They usually get 10-15 girls per location, but this year 24 girls had signed up! By the our fourth session that number actually crept up to 26 girls! Wow, that's a lot of girls. (A lot of energy too in a group ages 8-12!) Luckily there are also eight of us coaching so we seem to have things under control. Some coaches come on Tuesdays, some come on Thursdays, and a couple others come both days as their schedule permits. This leaves us with 4 or 5 coaches per session. As head coach I'm there for every session. (Well minus two sessions that I have to miss due to travel for work.)

Lesson 1 - Getting To Know Each Other

Our first lesson was all about getting to know each other! The great thing about the Girls On The Run (GOTR) program is that it incorporates running into a number of fun learning exercises. During the "Getting To Know Each Other" lesson, one of the games that we played was a name tag tag game! Each girl had a sheet of labels with every other girl's name on it. We then started running laps and each time a girl passed another girl, they'd stick the correct name tag on her back. (Each girl was wearing a name tag on the front to prevent the name from being totally impossible.) The girls ran several laps playing this game and by the end everyone was giggling, covered in stickers, and trying to help each other peel stickers off their backs and the ends of their ponytails for the longer haired girls.

Getting The Girls Ready For An Exercise

Lesson 2 - Being A Girl Of Your Word

In the second lesson we learned about making important, positive promises and expectations such as being healthy, completing homework assignments, and listening to our parents. This time as we started running laps and playing games we started handing out small plastic beads to each girl as she came around the field and finished a lap. The girls carried a little plastic bag with them as they ran, would get their bead, put it in the bag, and go on for the next lap. Not only is this a great way to keep them motivated, but its also a great way for Coach Monika to keep track of their laps each week!

Lesson 3 - Making Important Changes

With two lessons a week we started our second week with Lesson 3 which focused on "Making Important Changes". We had the girls identify negative behaviors, and then positive behaviors in contrast to them. Each girl wrote down four negative behaviors on index cards, and when they started running their laps they'd come up to us and slam their negative behavior card into the scary SENOR HIDEOUS BOX, collect a bead, and then keep going for the next lap.

Senor Hideous

During our discussion of negative behaviors a number of funny things were revealed:

1. Apparently all kids fight with/are mean to/bite their siblings (how would I know, I'm an only child)
2. Tipping your chair back in class is a popular, rebellious activity for 8-12 year old girls
3. Almost all kids have eaten cat or dog food, play-doh, or sand (seriously??)

We were encouraging the discussion of negative behaviors when one girl raised her hand and said "I've eaten dog food!" (OMG!) I laughed and said "Okay, but let's focus more on behaviors that you know are bad in the way that they make someone else feel bad." Another hand shoots up.

"I've eaten cat food!" Another hand - "ME too!" "So have I!"

HAHA! Okay, so while trying not to laugh too much, I tried to direct the conversation back to our topic, but made a joke that in my day kids used to eat play-doh and not pet food. A hand goes up. "I've eaten play-doh!" "Me too!" Omg.. okay... so we pretty much derailed on that exercise after a while, but were able to move on to the next game. Too funny!

Lesson 4 - Taking Care Of Our Physical Health

In lesson 4 we talked about healthy habits (brushing your teeth, eating fruits and vegetables, getting enough sleep, etc) and also discussed the food pyramid, the food groups, and examples of foods that went into each food group.

Food Type Artwork From The Girls

The trick question of the day? What food group does peanut butter fit into? Meats and proteins or fats and oils?? I'm leaning mostly towards meats and proteins.... but still, hmm..

So far the group of girls has completed 258 laps (that's a lot of beads) and 65 miles! On average each girl is running about a mile each session. By the end of the program (12 weeks, 24 lessons) the girls will be prepared to run a 5k! (3.1 miles)

Getting through all of the games and exercises in the 1 hour 15 minute time slot is pretty challenging. Organizing and preparing for the sessions for the coaches and sending out updates after each session to the parents is becoming a bit time consuming. I'm starting to feel like I have a second job! Make that third job actually, marathon training is my second job right now! Its all worth it though and its been a lot of fun.

We have 18 more sessions to go! I'm sure you'll hear more from me about it throughout the season.