Column: Learning to persevere

A few days ago, at Girls On The Run, it was a day that will live in the memory of my team for all eternity: we did our practice 5K and we learned about perseverance.

You might have expected something more extravagant to have happened, but the 5K practice is a pretty big milestone for Girls On The Run because it gets us ready for the big 5K event at the end of the season – Piedmont Medical Center’s Reindeer Romp Benefiting Girls on the Run!

Now, let us talk about what perseverance is for a moment, and then I will write a little more about the 5K. I think perseverance is when you push through when you feel like you want to give up. For example, on Wednesday when we did our practice 5K, I fell behind because I was beginning to get tired. Then I realized I only had two more laps to go. Instead of saying “I give up” and lying on the ground, I pushed on and finished one more of the lap before it was time for practice to end.

Of course, before we started we stretched. My coaches said we could only stop to get water after our 15th lap because in the 5K we get water in the middle of the race. After that, my coaches gave us pieces of string to make a bracelet or necklace. The plan was for us to get a piece of string every time we ran a lap. With that in mind, they sent us off with one mission: to run a full 30 laps.

In the end I didn’t finish all the laps, but that was OK because I still have the next couple of weeks to prepare for the real deal – and I learned a lot about pacing. That’s why we have the practice 5K. One more week of GOTR after Thanksgiving, and then we’ll see you at the Reindeer Romp on Dec. 5!

To register for the Reindeer Romp, visit gotrtricountysc.org.

At GOTR the week before that, we started our lesson by looking at a picture.

So you can get a visual, here are some details. There was a blond haired woman, who I guessed was a model, advertising some kind of shampoo. I know the details I gave are a little bland, but I am trying to make a point. Seeing how beautiful her hair was, we assumed it was because she used that shampoo. This influenced us to want to buy that shampoo so we can look as gorgeous as her.

Influences can be good or bad. The advertisement I mentioned is a great example of this. It can be good because it’s encouraging to buy that shampoo so your hair will look gorgeous. It can be bad because you get the impression that your hair is not good enough as it is and it won’t look good until you buy that product. Don’t let things influence you in a bad way. My coaches and teammates are good influences because they’re always pushing me forward. Bad influences are people who make you feel bad about yourself, like bullies. My point is that we need to be good influences.

This week we also did our community outreach project. We decided to help within our school. As a team, we did things like picking up trash and rearranging, cleaning, and organizing classrooms.

To do all of that in one afternoon we divided into groups. My group rearranged my teacher’s classroom for her. Another group helped organize the fifth grade teacher’s classroom. One group even swept a whole classroom. I know that doesn’t sound like much but it is. Before you get too worried, we did get permission from the teachers of the participating classrooms. In the end our community outreach project was a success and we learned a valuable lesson about influences.

This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 9:33 AM with the headline "Column: Learning to persevere."