I believe good running is like the ‘perfect storm’. It’s when mind, heart and body come together and it sends you flying.
In life, it’s tough work to achieve the connection among the three and function in harmony, all of the time. For example, who hasn’t woken up on a Monday morning with body aches, or felt anxious about a 9am presentation or procrastinated to avoid a confrontation with someone or something? These are all common occurrences that have the potential to compromise our mood, our actions and possibly our day. Ideally, as adults, we can recognize the discomfort and cope in healthy ways. It’s our age, skill and experience that help us to process information, form opinions and take action. It’s essentially how we take care of ourselves.

Now imagine being a young girl who is faced with stresses of her own. Developmentally she’s in a place where she simply and naturally does not have the maturity to have built a toolbox full of healthy coping strategies. She is experiencing many ‘firsts’ and has a limited ability of navigation to articulate and address her needs.

What stresses could possibly affect a girl’s day, her life? There are many. Changes in her biological, sexual and physical development are big ones. She faces the bombardment of conflicting messages between family and friends, about her culture, morals and religion. Maybe most skewed are the messages she receives from media about her beauty, body, sex and violence. While we cannot control many of these changes and resolve all conflict for her, we can absolutely teach girls how to manage them in powerful and healthy ways. Title IX Girls Running Club offers girls an affordable, sustainable, trusted, coping tool in running to help navigate the changes and help her to build that budding toolbox.

Running requires; discipline, compassion, form, discovery, big picture thinking, strength, goal setting, stamina, endurance, relaxation, and much, much more. These concepts are universal and transferrable at any age. I was introduced to running when I was in my mid-20s, by a group of women in my community. 15 years later we’re still running together and have weathered marriages, separations, second careers, deaths and births over thousands of miles of road and trail.

Whether you are a runner or not, the power of movement and connection of mind, heart and body is absolutely undeniable. Get moving and enjoy where it takes you.

Gotta Run…

Stacy