Daily Mile – An Míle Laethúil

At one of our first Active Schools Committee meetings of the 2019/20 school year, we brainstormed ways of getting the children of Ballyconnell NS more active, more often.

One of the first ideas that we came up with was doing the Daily Mile every day for a month. We thought this was a great idea because running is one of the simplest and most effective ways of improving your fitness. It’s also one of the cheapest – no equipment required – just yourself!

We decided that the best time of the school day to do the Daily Mile was first thing in the morning. We thought that running for 15/20 minutes each morning would really wake everybody up and prime everybody’s brain for a day of academic excellence. Mens sana in corpore sanum! (A healthy body in a healthy mind!)

Each morning for the month of October, upon arrival at school, everyone dropped their bags and began bounding around the school. Our teachers paired us with someone in our class of similar fitness level, so that we would have company and encouragement while we ran. Later on in the month, older children and younger children were paired together. The múinteoirí always talk to the older children about showing good example to the younger children and this was a classic example of it in action! It also allowed students of different classes to get to know each other, thus improving overall school spirit.

Each day, our teacher recorded how many laps we completed. This helped us keep track of our progress and provided motivation as we could see how much we were improving!