Fitness, Fun, and Food make for a fantastic fundraising event.

Run For Us 2022 is a fundraising event that Newlands Intermediate School runs annually. The event, which was held on Friday the 13th of May this year, is a day where the whole school walks or runs laps around the bottom field to raise money. Amazingly, this year the school got to walk/run on our bike track, instead of getting our shoes dirty in the mud. The pump track is 500 metres long, which is half a kilometre, and two laps equal to one kilometre. Some people aimed to complete a half marathon (42 laps, and 21 km) or even a full marathon (84 laps, and 42 km).

To track our laps, we were given a card with a coloured rope - representing our syndicates colour - to put around our necks. The cards had our names written on them, and a navy blue border on the outside that had numbers and dots running across it. The dots ran directly parallel to the numbers, and a dot would have to be ticked off before a number, so that every time a number was ticked off, it was to show that you had completed a kilometre. At the end of a lap, either a teacher, a parent, or a student from the college would mark your card for you.

Whenever we got hungry or wanted a break, we could head over to our bags, which had been kept on the netball courts for the day. There were also a lot of stalls set up outside the courts, selling various foods and drinks throughout the day. Some of these were breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, sausages, cheese rolls, candy, Sprite, Fanta, and L&P.

I personally had a really great time at Run For Us last week. Walking around the field and talking with my friends was fun, and the canteen food was also really good. I managed to get 54 laps around the field, which is equivalent to 27 kilometres. Overall, Run For Us was a great experience for me.

This year's Run for Us has been epic! With generous donations coming in from all over the world. The participation on the day was astonishing, it's not until you tally up the laps and kilometres, do you get an appreciation of how far the kids at Newlands Intermediate have travelled. In 2019, the last time Run for Us was held, we covered 9500.5 KM! This year we set a new record of 9905.5 km. What a stunning effort!

During the day, 275 students completed a HALF MARATHON and 28 completed a FULL MARATHON. 4 of our students completed 100 laps. To achieve their 50km they were travelling at over 8km per hour! All this has been achieved by 11, 12 and 13-year-olds. We are so proud.

On behalf of Newlands Intermediate, I'd like to give a shout out to New World Newlands, Pak n Save Kilbirnie and Beard Brothers Butchery. Your sponsorship has helped make this our most successful event to date.

To our families and friends, Thank you for your generous donations. We are proud to be part of your community and help champion the achievements of your kids.