Julie Fagan

Girls On The Run Spring 5K

This weekend was a relaxing one for the Fagan family. We spent most of our time on the boat (the weather on Saturday was gorgeous) and around the house and I’m beginning this week feeling well-rested, which is something I know to never take for granted, especially with a little one on the way!

Girls On The Run 5K Race

One of the more eventful things that occurred this weekend was our Girls On The Run (GOTR) 5K! After working hard for 12 weeks and meeting up every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for practice, it was finally time for the girls to tackle the end-of-season spring 5K race!

(As you can see above, my spiffy GOTR cape was a little hard to manage and kept blowing around like crazy!)

The 5K took place in Mooresville at the Lowe’s Corporate Headquarters at 9 a.m. on Saturday. The beautiful campus was basically shut down for the race which helped the 5K run smoothly since there weren’t any major streets to run by or any cars passing the girls as they ran.

Our team arrived at 8 a.m. and met up at our designated pink flag to check in, attach our race bibs and sign waivers.

My co-coaches and I made sure everyone had everything they needed and also supplied leis to the girls to help our team get in the spirit!

I know I’ve talked about how much I adore my co-coaches before, but I truly cannot say enough wonderful things about these two women. Rita and Wendy have been more than just fellow GOTR volunteers to me. They are true friends and with the way the three of us seem to text all the time and stay in constant communication, I know we’ll stay close even though we’re done coaching together. (Both Rita and Wendy have coached for years and will not be coaching in the fall. I am planning to take the fall season off since our baby is due in August and am hoping to resume coaching again once I have all my ducks in a row with the little one!) They joked that the minute I tell them I’m in labor, they’re going to round up our whole GOTR team and meet me at the hospital to cheer me on! Haha!!

For the 5K race, every girl and coach is given a race bib with the number one on it because the emphasis on this race is not on time. The GOTR 5K is all about simply on accomplishing a big goal. Every girl is “number one” so the race bibs note this which I think is such a cute and creative idea!

A brief description of the mission behind GOTR from the GOTR website:

We also had two birthday girls running on Saturday and they received little blue stars to pin on their race t-shirts.

Happy birthday V and L!

Before the race began, each girl met up with their running buddy. A running buddy can be a member of the family, a close friend or a GOTR race day volunteer.

If you’d like to get involved with GOTR but don’t have the time to coach twice a week, definitely look into volunteering on race day or participating as a running buddy! It’s a one-day commitment that’s also a ton of fun. I actually ran as a running buddy in the fall 5K with one of my girls and had a blast.

Though coaches are not required to run, I was really bummed not to be able to run in the 5K this year (running pregnancy = not a good combination for me personally), but I was able to team up with Ryan and still participate!

Ryan is a little more than two weeks out from his ACL surgery and running is just very uncomfortable for me right now, so we decided to walk together! Since the 5K course included two laps around the Lowe’s campus, we just walked one together because Ryan’s knee cannot handle much more than that right now. This ended up giving us the ability to cheer loudly for the girls and snap pictures of my team members and their running buddies as they ran by which was so, so fun!

They would all absolutely light up when they heard us yelling their names!

Before the race began, the race announcer did something new this season and took the time to recognize the 8th graders – aka the GOTR graduates – and announced their names for everyone to hear which was really neat, especially since many of the 8th graders have been GOTR participants since 3rd grade!

Since I coach a middle school team of 6th – 8th graders, we had a bunch of 8th graders receive recognition which I think meant a lot to them, especially since they got GOTR capes to wear during the 5K so everyone running could recognize their awesome achievement along the course.

At 9 a.m. it was time to run! I could tell our girls were excited and a little anxious and it was fun to see them so giddy!

Ryan and I walked one lap along the course and then cheered for everyone as they came upon the finish line.

The girls worked so hard and I loved listening to all of their race day stories as they told me about their 5K experiences while talking a mile a minute. They definitely earned their medals!

Congratulations to all of the Girls On The Run girls – in Iredell and Rowan county and across the United States – for accomplishing such a BIG goal and completing 3.1 miles. You are all rockstars and I know I speak for every GOTR coach out there when I say we are so, so proud of all of you!

More Girls On The Run Blog Posts

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For those who may be interested in participating in Girls On The Run in some capacity, you may click here to find a chapter near you. I cannot recommend getting involved with this program enough. It’s the best!

Disclaimer: Photo releases are signed by all GOTR girls’ parents and coaches are encouraged by GOTR to share photos to help spread the word about such an amazing organization.

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