Dreamfar High School Marathon

For the past three weeks, I've been spending my Saturday mornings running with the Dreamfar High School Marathon teams. Their mission: Dreamfar High School Marathon turns the road into the classroom. We challenge high school students to reach their full potential in and out of school by demonstrating how dreams can be realized through hard work. DHSM focuses on character building, setting realistic goals, fostering teamwork and establishing a safe endurance base. We believe in our students' physical and emotional strength and fortitude; we look at the marathon course as the first of many trails they can blaze.

Running with the kids has been such a fantastic experience. I've always loved young people, but haven't had the opportunity to interact with this age group as intensely as we are able to while running. For anyone who has ever trained for a marathon with a friend knows that conversation gets very deep. You end up learning a lot about your running partners simply because you spend hours on end with each other, and you need SOMETHING to do! (Dawn and I have great, personally fulfilling conversations when we run.) Lately, I seem to be running with the seniors on the team. It's exciting to hear about them talk about applying to colleges, see them announce that they were accepted to their top schools, and just listen to them talking about all of their dreams and ambitions. With all of the negativity that you can hear on the news about kids, they are bright and refreshing! Today, my run was with Dan, Connie and Bianca, who all are applying to MIT to be engineers, Chloe, who wants to study Arabic and international relations and eventually be a ninja, and Amaya, who's just not sure what she wants to do. I was definitely in the shoes of Amaya at their age. I had no idea what I wanted to do!

My role when running with them is pretty undefined. Because Vic and I are friends, I never went through the interview and training process that many of the mentors have gone through, so I wrote my own "job description." My main objective is to ensure that all of the runners who I am with feel safe, strong and supported. Above and beyond that, I like to talk to each one to learn about them. We talk about the big stuff in their lives, like school and college, but also about whether a real tree or a fake tree is better, what movies are worthy of your $10, and where to get the best pizza. I love it!