Meet Emma. She is the youngest of 13 kids, is in 6th grade, loves animals and loves to run. She joined a running club at the Elementary, called Girls on the Run. I think that this is a great program because it was started and designed to help girls have a healthy and fun way to be involved, and they also do activities to build and strengthen their self esteems and self image, which I think is rather important. Emma has found that she Loves to run! I think that is so awesome, because for some strange reason, I love to run too! As she has been running with other girls in her school, they have been training for a 5k. Each girl had to have a running "buddy", and I was so flattered when she asked me to run with her a few months ago. She wanted to win this race really bad, so we started "training" together. We would run about 3-3.5 miles a few times a week, she is a fast little runner! 2 days before the race we had a practice run with all the girls and all their running buddies. Emma was 7 minutes ahead of the next fastest girl, then 11 minutes before the next group of girls. The winner of the 5k race would get a brand new pair of running shoes, which Emma desperately needed. After seeing how fast she was in in the practice run, I figured she had it in the bag. Well, the race day came, and we came all dressed up in our 80's attire (which was our teams theme) and no one else had felt like having any school/team spirit. We decided to leave the side ponies and knee socks anyway. Emma got really excited and was worried anyone was going to get in front of her so she sprinted the first about half mile and winded herself, but don't you fret, she kept her speed nice and steady and came in 6th place out of 400 girls 400 running buddies! 6th place out of 800 runners? I'd say that's pretty dang amazing.
Here is our Awesome Cheering squad. Another reason I love having such a huge family. Always the best cheering section at any event :) We are so grateful they were there to help us keep our motivation.
Anyway- Way to go Emma on your first 5k!!!
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