Get Moving Houston! Mayor Bill White’s Wellness Council Initiative

Houston, Texas—Houston Marathon Kids® officially ends their six month running/walking and nutrition program Saturday, April 1, at 10:00 a.m. at Dyer Track & Field Stadium at HISD’s Delmar/Dyer Sports Complex, 2020 Mangum, Houston. K-5th graders will be arriving by car, bus or bike, with both the stadium and parking donated by HISD.

The little children and their families will have run/walked 26.2 miles over a period of six months, at school and at home, in increments of a quarter mile at a time, until their Final Mile Medal Celebration. Eleven thousand Houston ISD K-5th children, Houston private schools, and homeschoolers are participating in the first year. In Austin there are 40,000 Marathon Kids®, and in Dallas this year there are now 30,000. The ten-year-old, FREE running/walking and nutrition program also just launched in the Texas Rio Grande Valley of Harlingen with 3,000 K-5th graders. There are currently 285 USA towns and cities on the Marathon Kids® waiting list, as well as thirteen foreign countries asking for the free program.

Houston children provide an example to the world, as they stay fit, acquiring the love and habit of running/walking and eating well. They join the charge for overcoming childhood obesity and striking out at early onset Type II diabetes. Marathon Kids® recently received a commendation from The Texas Medical Association and will be featured on CNN Medical Health Report with Dr. Sanjay Gupta in February. The Texas Governor calls Marathon Kids® the “shining stars of Texas.” The program is free, maintaining eager participation among families of all income levels, especially those most vulnerable to Type II diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, and social challenges. The six month program simply encourages the joy of moving through space at an early age, bonding children with their classmates and with their parents via shared goal work to color in their Marathon Kids running and healthy eating logs and earning the free rewards.

On Saturday, April 1, there will be a ceremonial, community-wide, FREE Final Mile Medal Celebration for the Houston ISD, home-schoolers, and private schools at Dyer Track & Field Stadium at 10:00 a.m.

In stages, thousands of little children and their families run their laps and then dash through the multi-colored balloon arched Finish Line. The registered children earn their Houston Marathon Kids® Water Bottles, healthy eating coloring books, bicycle bumper stickers, and their Finisher Medal. Running with them and honoring them for having “the courage to start” will be a representative from Mayor Bill White’s Get Moving Houston! organization, sponsor Whole Foods Market volunteers, sponsor CVS Pharmacy community volunteers, community runners, Houston ISD Physical Education Leader, Houston Police Department runners, Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness Co-Chair Jeff Ross, MD, Texas Dept of Health Services Commissioner Eduardo Sanchez, MD, United Space Alliance runners and HARRA volunteers.

Playing “The Star Spangled Banner” will be jazz saxophonist Thad Scott of The Marcia Ball Band. Little Houston ISD children, including evacuee children, will be featured in the ceremonial flag lap and will hand out bouquets to Houston leaders/supporters. The children will be celebrated as they ceremonially finish what at first seemed, to a little child, to be an insurmountable project: running 26.2 miles over six months. Every K-5th child has been coloring in their Marathon Kids® Running Log© throughout the year, as well as coloring in their Marathon Kids® Fuel Log© (eating 5-a-day fruits and veggies). Children who are blind count their accumulated miles by putting beads into an empty plastic water bottle.

All children can be Marathon Kids: rich/poor, slender/overweight, sighted/blind, fast/slow, deaf/hearing, able/disabled.

Houston ISD and other community Physical Educators, as well as community volunteers from HARRA (Houston Area Road Runners) and the United Space Alliance Running Club, will be organizing and running the stadium at the free April 1 Final Mile Medal Celebration.

Houston Mayor Bill White’s Wellness Council has blessed this free program as a vital initiative of “Get Moving Houston!”

Later, at springtime assemblies, all Finishers will receive their earned Houston Marathon Kids® Finisher T-shirt.

Marathon Kids® is a ten-year-old, Texas-birthed, grassroots initiative that has been featured in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press stories, Weekly Reader, Scholastic News, Nurses Digest, CBS Radio and has an upcoming feature in Prevention Magazine. The organization recently was featured in the “Annual Inspirational Heroes of Running” December issue of Runners World.

The program is free to Houston children because of the sponsorship of Whole Foods Market, CVS Pharmacy, with critical help from foundations such as The Moody Foundation, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, The Meadows Foundation and The Simmons Foundation. Joining in to keep the six month running/walking and nutrition program free are Rice University Athletics, United Space Alliance, Houston Mayor’s Wellness Council, United Space Alliance Running Club, HARRA, GSD&M, etc. Marathon Kids was nominated from the State of Texas for the “Innovation in Prevention” Award with the US Health & Human Services agency.

Questions about Marathon Kids? Kay@MarathonKids.com

www.MarathonKids.com