I do not like rules.
Actually, I have never liked rules.
I would tell everybody, by the time I was five years old,
that "I am the boss of me".
Teachers did not like that very much. They called me, "A bad kid."
I prefer, "Strong and opinionated".
My school had a Kilometer Club when I was six years old, and I joined.
I made a goal to run as many kilometers as I possibly could.
I had these people in my family who were runners, and I was like,
"They have no rules, they can just go anywhere."
I was like, "That's pretty cool. I need to be a part of this."
So I set this goal,
and in my first year of Kilometer Club, I ran 200 kilometers.
This is the time before maps and GPSs so they actually had to be there with me.
Pretty cool.
I decided that I loved to run.
There was no rules; I could go as far, as fast as I wanted.
It was awesome.
Basically, I am a superhero.
It felt amazing.
Then things started to slowly change.
First, my body changed, and I would look in the mirror and say,
"Why did I have to have those legs?"
I would look in the mirror, and I would see my freckles,
and I would say, "Why did I have to have spots all over my face?"
Then my school changed, and my friends changed,
and it seemed like my world kind of got turned upside down.
I was really worried about how to fit in.
"Who am I?"
The thing was that PE and running became really uncool.
Actually, it became the subject
that was most skipped by girls in high school.
I thought, "How interesting.
Here I am trying to fit in and be myself, and the thing I love most is uncool."
It turns out that I am not alone.
Between the ages of 12 and 19 64% of girls are considered inactive.
That is a pretty big number.
I felt scared, and unsure,
and not really understanding what to do about this.
It turns out that at the same time, our confidence is going down.
Our IQ scores are dropping,
we are less assertive, we are less confident,
and that is part of being a girl.
Lucky for me, I kept on running.
My parents encouraged me instead of sending me to my room,
they would say, "Go for a run, Ashley. You will feel better."
And I did. And it was amazing.
I have this thing I call "The scribble in my head."
It is colourful, it is bright, and it never stops talking.
Sometimes that scribble gets quite dark.
A couple of years ago,
I started experiencing this anxiety in a deeper, darker kind of way.
The kind of way where you do not want to sleep, and you do not want to eat.
Or you want to sleep until all your problems are gone, hopefully,
or not wake up until they are.
Or eat until there is no food left in the house,
and hope that every bite takes a little bit away from that problem.
I felt trapped, and scared, and I did not really understand what was going on,
and why a bubbly awesome person like me could feel this way.
A video came across my social media, and it was a girl,
she was telling her story.
The story gets a little bit more depressing as she goes on.
She does not talk, she is just showing these cue cards.
She talks about being bullied, and feeling alone and being depressed,
and being anxious.
I felt myself reflected in that story.
I knew exactly how she felt.
This is the story of Amanda Todd.
She was local, and sometimes when we are dealing with anxiety and depression,
you isolate yourself mentally and physically,
and she brought it back home for me.
I thought, "How could this 15-year old girl commit suicide?"
That is not fair, and it is not cool.
So I created a program.
I used all the skills because I knew that when I felt best,
when I got of that dark anxiety and got out of the scribble in my head,
was when I was running.
It was when I was with my community
and they would show up for me, and I would show up for them.
This program is about connecting girls with girls.
We connect high school and university students
who have been through the body image, and the bullying,
and all that stuff we go through,
and we connect them with teen girls, ages eight to twelve,
where we are at our most vulnerable stage in deciding who we want to be.
This program is a nine-week program
where girls come and they get to build their confidence,
they get to connect, because we know that girls who have mentors
are 2.5 times more likely
to feel confident and feel like they can be successful.
I think that is pretty awesome.
They train to run a five kilometer fun run.
I use "running" very lightly
because "running"can be hopping, skipping, jumping.
It can be anything that you think feels good.
That is what we call our "happy pace".
We teach girls to find their "happy pace".
Anxiety is not just about me, and it is not just about Amanda.
It is about everybody;
it is something that we all deal with on one scale or another.
Imagine feeling anxiety all the time.
You might get it if you are preparing for a test,
or you might get it if you are preparing for an event of thousands of people.
But imagine having it and not having the tools or language to talk about it.
Or the tools or language to know what is actually happening.
Running is not even about running.
For me, running is about our mental health.
Mental health is something that we all have.
It is not bad, it is not dangerous.
Basically, if you are human, and you have a mind, then you have mental health.
It is something you need to take care of, like brushing your teeth.
Running is the most easily accessible, under-utilised tool we have
to build positive mental health.
When I tell adults that I am a runner, I get one of two responses.
One, "I love to run! Perfect! Let's go! When can we train?"
The second one, "Oh my gosh, I hate running."
"I have an injury, I do not have the right body type."
"I do not have anybody to go with."
The list goes on.
I think it is about changing our perspective;
about taking a different look at what running really is.
For me, it builds so much stuff, but three things in particular.
Confidence; when you run, you feel good about yourself.
You can build your confidence, and you can take that outwards,
and you can build a community.
A community of people who are going to support you
because they understand who you are.
And concentration.
We can get back down to our IQ scores and concentrate and focus
on what is really important, and get out of the scribble in our head
and actually understand what we want to do.
I want to share a really quick story with you
about a girl who joined the program
Her name is Nicole.
Nicole joined the program, not because she liked to run.
Actually, her mom told me that Nicole hated PE.
Nicole had been bullied in grade three, and in grade four,
she was dealing with mean girls and frenemies.
If you who do not know, frenemies and mean girls
are your friends sometimes, and not your friends other times.
Nicole joined the program because her friends joined.
Which is often why we do a lot of things.
But Nicole made a separate commitment.
She showed up every week, and she worked, and she learned, and she ran.
What I love about Nicole is that by the end of the eight weeks,
Nicole had not only built enough confidence to run
in a five kilometer fun run,
but she was now going back to PE and competing against the boys.
I think that is pretty awesome.
Nicole is an inspiration now.
She has joined her leadership group at school,
and she chooses her friends based on who she is.
She has friends from all over and different groups now
because she knows who she is.
Any action or movement starts with one step.
For me, that step starts in my running shoes.
I choose to get up everyday and go for a run.
Sometimes it is a dance party, sometimes it is a run.
Sometimes it is more of a hop, or skip, or jump, but I go.
Because I know that I will be less grumpy,
kinder, calmer,
and more able to commit to other people, when I run.
I hope that maybe I can inspire one girl to be active,
because she might inspire one more, and she might inspire one more.
The current 11% of girls that are currently active right now,
considered to do enough physical activity to benefit their health
are 16 and 17 years old,
that 11% is going to change,
because of that one girl.
That girl can be who she is,and she can build her confidence, and she feels good.
I was at an event last month, and I asked 300 people, mostly adults,
"Who was active when you were ten or twelve years old?"
All these hands shot up, and I was like, "Great!"
Then I asked them, "Who still does those activities now?"
All these hands came down.
If girls are not active by the time they are ten years old,
you only have a 10% chance of being active when you are 25.
That is a pretty low number.
Sometimes, I am all dressed up in running clothes, and I am ready to go,
and I am sitting in my car, at home, and I am like, "I am too busy,
I have lots of things to do, I do not have time!"
"I need to go," and I just sit there.
If I cannot make myself go, I call my best friend.
I tell her what is going on, I might feel a little bit anxious.
She says, every time without fail,
"Ashley, you need to go take that first step.
You take those first steps, and you go for five minutes.
You do not have to go far, you do not have to go fast
but you need to go for five minutes."
I say, "OK."
She says, "You go for that five minutes, and it might turn into ten,
and it might turn into 20, It might turn into an hour,
it really does not matter because there are no rules.
But guaranteed, those first few steps are going to make you feel better."
And those first few steps? They might actually change your life.
Thank you.
(Applause)