SILT, Colorado — It took her 30th birthday for Suzanne Simon to get turned on to running.

Now, she’s making it her mission to make sure the girls at Cactus Valley Elementary School start their running careers sooner.

Simon, the fifth-grade teacher who started competitively running in the Strawberry Shortcut last year and is now training for the Denver Marathon, has introduced Girls on the Run to the third- through fifth-grade girls at Cactus Valley.

Girls on the Run is a national program with a motto that “encourages preteen girls to develop self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running with curricula to address all aspects of girls’ development — their physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual well-being,” according to its website at www.girlsontherun.org. Although it just started in 1996, more than 40,000 girls in the United States and Canada are members.

Despite the fact that Simon just brought the program to the Silt school this year, more than 45 girls have already signed on. They meet, learn lessons and run every Monday and Wednesday with the goal of running in the Wondergirl 5K in Grand Junction on May 3.

Simon learned of Girls on the Run while registering for the Harbert Lumber 5K in Grand Junction last November. The race was the culminating event of Girls on the Run’s fall session, just as the Wondergirl is for the spring session. When she showed up to run the race, around 400 girls from the Girls on the Run’s Western Slope Association program were participating.

“It was unbelievable. I was like ‘Wow, that’s powerful.’ Four hundred girls, school age, who are motivated to try something new and challenge themselves,” Simon says, remembering the race. “I knew that was something that needed to happen for us.”

So Simon got in touch with the Girls on the Run Western Slope director Jill Henwood and put the wheels in motion to start the program.

“It wasn’t, ‘Can we?’ it was, ‘How are we going to do this?’” Simon said. “Just knowing what we have going on here, I think there is a huge need for a program like this.”

While teachers at Cactus Valley were psyched about Girls on the Run — as Simon soon found herself with the aid of assistant coaches Jill Madone, Jenny Zetah, Cindy Davis and Carrie Close-Hassel — Simon was unsure what the turnout would be as far as girls were concerned. In late January and early February, the coaches put together a PowerPoint presentation — set to the tune of “Ready to Run” by the Dixie Chicks — and showed it to all the third- through fifth-graders at Cactus Valley.

By the time the new program held its first training on Feb. 22, more than 56 girls were signed on. With only a 75-girl population to draw from in the three grades at Cactus Valley, almost 75 percent of the eligible girls at the school had registered for Girls on the Run. While a few had to drop the program because of other commitments, a consistent group of 45 is still going strong.

Girls on the Run, which is sponsored nationally by companies like Kellogg’s and New Balance, makes it easy for new schools to hop aboard. All the girls have to do is pay a fee of $35, and that includes the 5K race registration, a Girls on the Run T-shirt, a Wondergirl 5K T-shirt, a water bottle, an end-of-the-season banquet and all the lessons. A parent of one of the girls on the Cactus Valley team even volunteered to buy all the girls T-shirts to wear when they run the Wondergirl 5K so they will look like a team.

For coaches, Simon and her assistants received binders complete with lesson plans, training schedules and everything they need to get the girls ready for their 5K run.

“From a logistical teaching standpoint, it’s awesome,” Simon said. “It’s not any extra work.”

In Colorado, Girls on the Run has two offices, one out of Denver and one in the Grand Valley. The Grand Valley chapter — which was created in 2000 — includes 26 schools in the Grand Junction area, nine in Montrose County, three in Delta County and one in Gunnison, one in Silt and even one in Silverton.

The only negative part of the first season in the Girls on the Run program has been the snowy and cold weather this spring. It has made Simon rethink participating in the spring session.

“We will probably do it next fall instead of the spring because the weather is so unpredictable in the spring,” she said.

Running is just the tip of the iceberg in Girls on the Run. While the organization is based around the premises of getting girls to live healthier lives by running, its overall objective is to help girls become stronger in every facet of their lives and mature into well-rounded women.

“We have learned about a lot of other things like to respect and how to run in silence,” said Jenny Call, a fourth-grader at Cactus Valley.

“And not doing drugs like tobacco or marijuana. And we play lots of games, too,” said Natalie Dougherty, a third-grader.

Each one-hour-and-15-minute training session starts with a lesson where the coaches gather the girls and educate them on a topic ranging from being a better listener to eliminating negative thoughts.

“Each lesson has a different theme, and they all relate pretty much just to being a girl and what it takes to have a healthy lifestyle and making good healthy choices mentally, physically, nutritionally. Just girl stuff,” Simon said. “Making girls strong and proud and understanding themselves and people and their bodies and all that beautiful stuff.”

Then the group does a warm-up exercise incorporating the lesson, like playing telephone to show the importance of good listening or writing down negative thoughts and then doing a relay race centered on throwing away their “negative Nelly voice” — as Simon calls it. The warm-up includes some cardiovascular work to act as a warm-up before the girls run as well.

Then comes the run.

On Wednesday, the Cactus Valley girls were trying to run two miles. After the first lap, the girls were nothing but smiles. As the run progressed, some of the smiles began to fade and some of the girls began to walk. With coaches and their schoolmates encouraging them on, everyone pressed on and completed the training.

For the girls, Girls on the Run has helped them make more friends, get outside and run and learn valuable lessons that will help them live better lives. For the coaches, its rewarding to see the power it brings to all who participate.

“You guys are the ones that keep us going,” Simon told her girls on Wednesday. “You are so special, you don’t even know. You are inspiring.”