Oceanside CA— Last week at Oceanside’s Laurel Elementary School, State Assembly-member, Rocky Chavez helped kick off the schools ‘Mileage Club’ program.
The Laurel Elementary Mileage Club encourages family fitness and is sponsored, in part, by the ‘Move Your Feet Before You Eat’ charitable foundation.

Over the next eight weeks, the training program will help students and parents get in shape for the upcoming O’side Turkey Trot, which draws thousands of community participants each year on Thanksgiving morning. Students earn feet charms for miles they run or walk and they keep track of the laps they make with marks on a popsicle “lap” stick.
“This is an amazing experience.” said Rocky as he paused to get another lap marked on his popsicle stick, “A little girl I was just running with told me how she is putting nickles, dimes, and quarters into a jar for her college fund. These kids are just incredible.”
“This is what I live for.” said Kathy Kinane, Director of Kinane Events and the force behind the ‘Move Your Feet Before You Eat Foundation’ as she watched the kids running alongside their parents before the start of the school day. “It is great to see all of these kids out here running but what’s really special is seeing all of the parents out there too.”
The kids move along a fifth of a mile, mostly oval track, behind Laurel Elementary that was made possible when five teachers; Meredith McCain, Patricia Rameriz, Alyssa Schrom and Amy Atkinson wrote a grant proposal and submitted it to the Charger’s Foundation and the Chargers Champions program. The funding was approved and the track was built where kids in the Mileage Club now run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:25 to 8:50 before school.

The Carlsbad-based Move Your Feet Before You Eat®! Foundation was created to promote health and well-being through incorporating regular physical fitness into daily life, utilizing education, special events, and instructive coaching. It is for all ages, but its sharpest focus is on encouraging physical activity among young people, who face an epidemic of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes that are an increasing threat, in part, because today’s children aren’t getting enough physical activity. Since 2007, the Foundation has donated more than $230,000 to local schools and non-profits in North County.