Photo: Aidas Odonelis
All photos by: Aidas Odonelis
The humid air had our 100-per-cent cotton Lane 6 T-shirts clinging to us as we waited on the Central Tech track for the kids to arrive. This would be our second-last session with this incredible crew of volunteers, and I felt mixed emotions about nearing the end.
Humidity wasn’t the only thing in the air that morning—there was young love, too. My 13-year-old mentee, Sabrina, confessed to me that she had just started “dating” one of the boys in the group. She knows him from school and he shall remain nameless because, well, I was sworn to secrecy. “Kaleigh cannot find out,” she insisted, as if truly afraid of the wrath of her nine-year-old neighbourhood pal. “She told me not to date him.”
Let’s hope Kaleigh’s not reading this.
Sabrina was extra smiley with her new love interest around, swinging by every now and again for an innocent embrace. She seemed ready to conquer the day. After our usual warmup drills and one easy lap to loosen up the legs, we went straight into the five-minute challenge. Sabrina’s goal was to run two laps without stopping.
We were only a quarter of the way into the first lap when she slowed to a walk. I pulled out all the usual tactics: taking the pace down to a very slow jog, engaging her in conversation, encouraging her and assuring her that she is far more capable than she thinks. None of it worked.
We eventually made our way to the finish line, not quite as victorious as we had hoped but, hey, building endurance takes time. It was then that Sabrina discovered her jean shorts had ripped vertically in a very unfortunate place. And the more she ran, the more they ripped. “I can’t run anymore,” she demanded, pointing at her nether regions, only a few strides away from indecent exposure. This was a challenge I hadn’t foreseen. There wasn’t anything in the training manual about this.
First, I asked one of the Nike staff members if she by chance had an extra pair of shorts kicking around. She did not. Safety pins? Sabrina nixed that idea. Tape? There wasn’t any. Then, in the nick of time, the ever-inventive Coach Brittany Moran saved the day, offering my distraught mentee the extra pair of leggings she had in her backpack. And, what’s more, she could keep them. Sabrina was ecstatic.
“Brittany is a super-fast runner,” I told her. “In her fast pants, there’ll be no stopping you!” And I wish I had captured Sabrina’s reaction. It was the beaming face of a girl who suddenly believed in herself, in her potential. A girl who, even if only for a fleeting moment, believed she could achieve greatness. All from a pair of hand-me-down leggings.
After finding a place for Sabrina to change that wasn’t a porta-potty (because gross, right?), it was time for the long-awaited mentor-versus-mentee races: 50 metres, 100 metres and then 400 metres. Not surprisingly, she handily beat me at both the 50 and 100.
I really hoped her competitive nature would help her nail the 400 too, but unfortunately she got into her head as soon as we began. Despite my best efforts to keep her going, she ended up walking a good portion of the lap, making excuse after excuse to avoid running. “You’re going to beat me anyway,” she’d say, and, “I’m just not good at running.” It was clear that I had a lot more work to do with this one. And with only one week left in the program, I couldn’t help but wish we had a little more time.
As we opened up her journal to summarize the day, I told her I felt that her head was holding her back, with negative thoughts creeping in and convincing her to give up. “It happens to all of us,” I explained, “but with time and practice you learn to ignore those thoughts and replace them with positive ones.” I told her about Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It,” and that she could apply it to her running in moments of doubt. The next thing I knew she was writing in her journal that her goal for next week is to remind herself to “just do it” to keep herself from quitting. Cue heart explosion.
Did you miss the Week 3 installment? Catch up here.
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