A lot of girls don't love to run, and that's OK. They can skip, hop, jump, dance or do cartwheels. The goal simply is to keep moving.

Locally, we're just getting started with Girls on the Run, and we'd like to grow and expand the program to other communities.

One of our goals is to provide young girls with character-building life skills that can help them avoid risky adolescent behaviors, such as drug or alcohol use, early sexual activity and eating disorders.

Two of the girls came up with the idea because we would write notes to each other and we had to write everything four times.

We talked about relationships and how frustrating it is to see girls conform [in] certain ways to please guys.

There's a lot more to it than just running.