By: Marlene Cazarez

Several students took a trip to the beach, this trip wasn’t any normal beach trip you’d take to get pulled away by the waves or bury your feet in the sand. These bunch of students went down onto Dockweiler beach for their first race of the season. This race was a 5K, a small race which consisted of 3.2 miles. This race had people of many different ages; from middle schoolers, high schoolers, teachers, and even some elderly people! Throughout the year students and teachers run these races in order to prepare themselves for their ultimate goal of running the LA Marathon.

For many students in APB’s SRLA team this year this was their first time running this race and they were very excited to have been able to run this 5K. For instance, junior, Pedro Barreras stated “I was really nervous at first because there were like pros and people more advanced, especially since it was my first race. But once we started lining up to go run that got me really excited so I wasn’t thinking about it anymore.” Juniors, including Shirley Zavala and Esmeralda Hernandez also agreed with Pedro when he said that the crowd cheering on motivated him to continue running, especially when nearing the finish line.

When interviewing previous 5K runners such as junior, Shirley Zavala she said she loves running because she’s surrounded with positive vibes.

“The vibe of everyone there was so positive, everyone was just ready to start. Once you heard the horn [ you think] i’m so ready for this. And just in general when you’re running you get so much motivation to keep on going because you’re not alone on this. You want to keep and keep on pushing.”

As well as Junior, Esmeralda Hernandez, who ran her first race in the 8th grade. Esmeralda believes her running has improved so much since and was satisfied with her timing this year which was 30 minutes!

Overall, these students really enjoyed running and feel as these small races are only preparing them for the big thing. Congrats to all our runners and keep on running!