The second annual Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio marathon will be this Sunday, November 15. Last year’s inaugural event was an amazing sight, first because reportedly more than twenty thousand people were together in San Antonio, and it wasn’t a Fiesta-like party of beer, turkey legs and fajitas. Secondly, the number of participants signed up exceeded the expectations of race officials.
Once again bands like the Amazing Echos who were at the corner of South Alamo and South St. Mary’s Street last year, will be playing different types of music and stationed at approximately every mile of the route.
This year, a new event has been added to the 2009 Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio Marathon activities. It’s the San Antonio School Rock Challenge created by the San Antonio Sports. For the past ten weeks, school children at area elementary schools in grades K through 5 have been on a running or walking training schedule.
One day several weeks ago, I visited one South San Antonio ISD elementary school as fifth grade students were in the middle of their P.E. class.Israel Lopez is the Palo Alto Elementary Head P.E. Coach. He says the challenge is a great opportunity to get children at this age interested in exercise.
“Using the Kids’ Challenge is a fun way for the kids to understand and get involved and especially fun because there’s a big hype right now with the Rock 'n' Roll Challenge, the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon here in San Antonio, the success from last year," Lopez said
Coach Lopez says many of the kids are excited about the Kids Challenge program because they remember many of their relatives running in last year’s Rock 'n' Roll marathon.
"It’s a good tie-in to get the kids moving. And how we attach it to the school, and we, as coaches, get out there and run with them and they just have fun.”
According to reports from the Center for Disease Control, twenty-four percent of children in Bexar County are overweight; the national average is sixteen percent. An additional twenty percent are at-risk of becoming overweight.
The CDCreport further states that obese children are at significantly greater risk for high cholesterol, high-blood pressure and insulin resistant type-2 diabetes. Coach Lopez says he’s aware of the obesity problem in San Antonio and they try to address it from the day the school year starts. But he says, they can only do so much at school and that the students are taught about eating right and fun ways to exercise.
One fifth grade student at Palo Alto elementary who is taking the health-wise information to heart is Desni Alvarado. She says the Kids Challenge is about both eating right and exercising.
“It’s about all of that because you need to stay fit and you need to run and eat healthy and cut off the junk food," Alvarado explained.
Alvarado says whether or not there’s a Kids Challenge next year, she’ll continue doing what she’s learned this year about being healthy.
"Yeah, I think we’re going to start continue it because you always need to be health and stuff. It’s not just for like elementary, and you go on and go on until like you’re older and stuff. You stay healthy, “ she said
The winds picked up as I spoke with Eric Lugo outside the gym. Also a fifth grader he says he’s changed his eating habits because of the information he’s learned at school. Lugo says he eats more chicken now, with an occasional hamburger. Lugo and Alvarado are among the hundreds of South San Antonio ISD elementary students participating in the Kids Challenge, which. by the end of the program. will have almost completed a marathon.
Palo Alto elementary P.E. Coach Israel Lopez says the students ran in increments of half to a mile distance for ten weeks, totally 25.2 miles.
"What happens in order to finish their marathon mile on November 13, they’re going to have a big pep rally celebration at South San High School at their track meet, and they’re going to get one child from each grade level one boy, one girl and they’re going to go ahead and bus them to the South San High School and they’re going to run, finish their last marathon mile there at the high school,” Lopez said.
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