Participants in tomorrow's Oso Fit 5K Fun Run in Mission Viego, CA, are in for a treat. Actor RJ Mitte, who played Walter White's son in the AMC series, Breaking Bad, will be the guest of honor at the run.
Mitte, who appeared on the February/March 2015 cover of Neurology Now, is there to support a special "run within a run," sponsored by Children's Cerebral Palsy Movement, a nonprofit group in Orange County, CA, that promotes exercise for children with cerebral palsy (CP), according to founding director Debbie Fragner whose 11-year-old daughter Maddie has CP.
"RJ and his mother Dyna are absolute fireballs when it comes to CP advocacy," says Fragner. "RJ is so passionate about this whole thing." Mitte was born with CP but has a less severe form than that of his character on Breaking Bad.
In the CP Children's Fun Run, participants can enter either the quarter mile or half mile run/walk. All runners/walkers are eligible for run/walk buddies, able-bodied children from the Capistrano High School track team who will accompany them for the duration of the event.
Post-race, participants are welcome to a reception where Mitte and several other actors, including Aaron Schwartz (Guardians of the Galaxy), Kate Tomlinson (Speechless, Stuck in the Middle), Niko Pepaj (How to Get Away with Murder), and Mitte's sister, Lacianne Carriere (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), will greet runners and their families, sign autographs, and pose for photos.
The community has really rallied for the event, says Fragner. Food for the reception is provided by two local restaurants and a professional children's photography studio has donated its services to take pictures of participants. In addition, there will be a caregiver support station where caregivers can get free massages.
In what's billed as an Invitation to Freedom exercise, caregivers can release negative emotions and embrace positive ones by interacting with hand-painted blocks labeled with different emotions. "Caregivers carry emotions like disappointment, fear, and anger around with them, which is so tiring," says Fragner. The Invitation to Freedom exercise encourages caregivers to interact with the blocks, 20 of which are painted with words like hopelessness and discouragement and 20 with words like promise, faith, hope, and courage. "The exercise gives caregivers the opportunity to lay down fear and pick up hope or lay down discouragement and pick up promise," says Fragner. "It's a chance to symbolically release certain negative emotions and embrace more positive ones."
As a continuation of that symbolic gesture, the event will end with a release of hundreds of live butterflies.