Before setting off to run five miles around town, a small group of high school students and adult mentors huddle together, stack their hands atop each other’s and shout: “Twenty-six point two… together!”

Starting in the second week of October and lasting through the winter sports season, Dartmouth High School is participating in Dreamfar, a Boston-based organization trying to motivate young students to complete a 26.2-mile road race.

The ultimate goal is to train the students for the Cox Providence Marathon on May 1. In order to get there, students have encouragement and guidance from mentors. At Dartmouth, there’s nearly a one-to-one mentorship between students and their teachers.

“We’re running alongside the kids and doing exactly what they’re doing,” said teaching assistant Sarah Labossiere. “That’s how it was designed: more of a mentorship. We’re actually not under the athletic department, we’re under student activities.”

Of the six teachers working with students, only two have run a marathon.

“We’re all new, too. We’re nervous, but we’re doing this together,” said Labossiere.

“It was started up in Boston,” said math teacher Rachelle Lemieux. “It was started by a special ed teacher who was running a marathon, and she thought it would be a cool thing to get kids involved. It has since grown. There’s about 150 students in the Boston area doing it this year.”

This year also marks the beginning of a pilot program in the South Coast. Students from Dartmouth High, Old Rochester Regional High School and City on a Hill New Bedford will be joining the greater-Boston Dreamfar participants in May.

Ideally, the Dreamfar runners will train in their separate schools during the week and then meet up on Saturdays for their long runs. Rather than trekking up to Boston every weekend, the South Coast group has been meeting at Old Rochester Regional for endurance training.

Lemieux said another great feature of the program is that it carves a space for students who might not be interested in participating in a competitive team sport. With only about six regular students participating at Dartmouth High, she admitted that persuading students to run a marathon is something of a hard sell.

“Training is tough,” said Mason Rapoza, 16, a junior at Dartmouth. “We do five [miles] every practice. You move up half a mile every week.”

Rapoza said that, while he hesitated to sign up initially, he was swayed by the thought of saying he completed a marathon.

“Less than one percent of people have run a marathon. I thought that’d be really cool,” he said, adding that he hopes to put the accomplishment on a college résumé.

For now, students will be running on Mondays and Thursdays and cross training on Tuesdays. The long runs will increase by half-mile increments each week.

“Part of the challenge is learning how to persevere through the more challenging weather,” said Labossiere. “We run on the road. We’re going to try out a trail run over vacation, just because we can and it will be fun. But the marathon’s on the road, so we’re getting used to where we’ll be running.”

“This is our first year, so we’re just getting our arms around it,” said Lemieux. “But the way it’s done in Boston is that, during the week, the teachers do the training with the kids. On the weekends, it is outside people who become the mentors.”

Next year, the South Coast crew is hoping they can bring in volunteer runners from the community to take on a mentorship role.

“In the beginning, the mentors go to training. We meet with some physical therapists and nutritionists. So we’re given resources,” she said. “As mentors, we let the kids set the pace, but we also want to try to push them.”

The Dreamfar South Coast team has a GoFundMe for those who would like to help the team reach its goal. Donations will help the team afford equipment and transportation. The GoFundMe page is at https://www.gofundme.com/9rajupk4.