They walked.

Even though every step caused a little bit of pain for 13-year-old Jessica Hegewald, she wasn’t about to stop after coming this far.

“When did the pain start?” she asked. “Like, right now. Like, my feet are on fire. Our legs are killing us.”

So she walked.

So did her friends.

So did her classmates.

They walked, and walked and walked.

Jessica and the rest of the students from Lance Middle School spent all day Friday enjoying beautiful weather, laughing with friends, listening to music and cracking jokes.

But mostly, they spent the day walking.

The school’s end-of-year walk-a-thon around the school track raised $18,000 for St. Jude’s cancer research, a charity the students voted on earlier in the year.

It marked the second year for the event, with the children raising $24,000 last year for Nothing But Nets, an organization that fights malaria in Third World countries.

“They brought in more than $40,000 (in two years), and the coolest part is they decided on the charity and did this on their own,” said Colin Bradley, a seventh-grade teacher who helped organize the event.

Once the kids settled on a charity, they went to family, friends and local businesses and got pledges in return for agreeing to walk all day. Because the seventh-graders raised the most money, they got to walk on the paved track, while others had to settle for the grass track.

But it didn’t look like anyone was having any less of a good time ... sort of.

“Well, they are middle schoolers, so they did whine,” Bradley laughed. “But you should see their faces when they get done. They are so proud of themselves. Some people think middle school kids, teenagers, don’t have empathy. But you start telling them about what they are raising money for — cancer research — and they connect it to someone in their own family. That’s what makes it personal.”

He said the entire school gets behind the walk-a-thon, with custodians lugging out sound systems early in the morning and parents setting up concession stands. Individual classes got to bring out tents where they could stash goodies and sodas, and get a little shade during 15-minute breaks every hour — if they wanted to take a break, that is.

“Tyler hasn’t taken any breaks all day!” one student said.

“I have now,” Tyler Shircel replied. “But I’ve done about 48 laps so far.”

With four laps equaling a mile, if Tyler’s math was correct, he was already at 12 miles after starting his walk around 9:30 a.m., and he still had a couple hours until the end of the school day.

“My feet are hurting now,” he said, “but I made it this far.”

His friend, Liam Aikens, came up with the perfect strategy to keep walking.

“You do it like this, you put your left leg down,” he said with a loud plop of his left shoe.

“Then you lift up your right and you put that one down,” he added. “Now you just keep doing it.”

And so he did.

So they walked.