Preface
Young Runners: The Rules When I'm running it's like an obstacle and I just want to break the wall down and push so hard so I can get to the next level and I'm even better and have more challenges.
-- Sasha Estrella-Jones, seventh-grade runner at a Brooklyn, New York, middle school
1. All children and teenagers can learn to love running.
2. Running is easy when approached with patience and common sense.
3. Running progress should be gradual over time.
4. Running is done mainly for fun, learning, and good health.
5. Running should not dominate a child's life.
6. Running enjoyment is enhanced with friends and schoolmates.
7. Parents who run are the best role models for their children.
8. Children's growth and development must be taken into account.
9. Children approach running differently than adults.
10. Competition should not put undue pressure on running children.
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Introduction
The Kids' Running Revolution I challenge my students. They have to run 3 miles a day even if they're on vacation in Puerto Rico.
-- Steve Sloan, Mighty Milers coach at an East Harlem elementary school, New York City
On a school night in the winter of 1982, I collected my 9-year-old daughter, Allison, and trekked into Manhattan so she could do a speed workout on an indoor track overhanging a gymnasium at Columbia University. Allison was a third grader at the time, had been running on and off for years, and trying to make the finals of the Colgate Women's Games track program in the youngest age group, first through third grade. Her event was the 800 meters and she had the semifinal round coming up. A good race could vault her into the Madison Square Garden final.
We were then living on Staten Island, and I could not locate a nearby indoor track on this particular night -- a night I'd assigned for speed. Many desperate phone calls yielded Columbia as the only game in town.
That evening, the university track was filled with adult joggers who marveled at the little girl zipping past them, lap after lap. With stopwatch in hand, I called out times, trying to motivate Allison to perform like a professional. I felt this dedication would firm up her commitment to become a runner and set her on a path of hard work and good values, encourage self-confidence, dispel gender stereotypes and -- who knew? -- maybe one day land her on the United States Olympic team. I considered Colgate a springboard. We got home around midnight.
Allison ran well in the semis and made the 800 finals, and our whole family turned out for the big day. The 225 finalists were hailed by celebrities including Lena Horne and Willie Mays. The Garden rocked. And in a quiet corner outside the track arena, I prepped Allison with complex strategies on running the tight track against the five other third graders. She looked at me blankly, thinking, I'm sure, What is Daddy doing to me?
On my office wall above the computer, I have a photograph of the six girls lined up on the starting line with the gun about to sound. I look at the photo now. Five of the girls appear relaxed, with arms down, hands loose, neutral posture, and mildly focused expressions. Guess which girl looks tense, with hunched shoulders, fists clenched, and a fearful countenance. Allison placed fifth.
The Pure Fun of Running
As I came to my senses and let go of the child star mind-set, Allison went on to play soccer, run high school cross-country, and, at 24, complete the New York City Marathon. She and I can laugh about it now, but I was clearly the type of overzealous, foolhardy track parent that irks me today. Before Allison's races that winter, she would say to me at bedtime, "Dad, I'm nervous. What if I don't run a better time?" Even though I was able to catch myself and let Allison choose her own path as a teenager, I cringe when I think of that period now.
I hope Young Runners will help readers emphasize the pure fun of running while letting children progress at their own rate, make their own choices, and take competition as a healthy challenge, not a stepping-stone to stardom. We all want the best for our children, but in a distorted educational landscape that stresses test taking above all else, with the plum of marquee college acceptance, it's all too common for parents to consider running one more subject to master, one more opportunity to outdo others, one more vehicle to enhance a child's and family's stature.
In his research on young athletes, Michigan State sports psychologist Daniel Gould, Ph.D., has seen how closely today's parents seem linked to their children's every hit and miss. "Some parents manifest their own childhood athletic dreams through their child," says Gould, "whereas others might be indirectly reinforcing their worth as a parent through their child's success, as in 'My daughter runs a good time and everyone recognizes her and tells me what a good job I am doing as a parent.'"
It's easy to be seduced by such notions, but by the time our younger daughter, Jamie, started out in sports, I knew enough to stay out of the way, more or less. I was finally and permanently put in my place when it was Jamie's turn to run on the high school team. With her teenage disposition craving acceptance in freshman cross-country, she suffered the ultimate embarrassment when I would show up at meets as the resident expert wearing my red woolen hat -- the dorkiest hat in creation. That and my high-cut running shorts. Well, it was all over for me, a track dad put out to pasture.
My early zeal might have been satisfied if only my daughters had had friends to run with as children. I knew that peer support and approval could take them far. But their friends did not run. It was not considered cool. There were no PE teachers organizing running groups or much in the way of kids' programs outside of Colgate, which was highly competitive. When Allison was 5, to enable her to run with other children, we had to take her an hour away to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx for a kids' cross-country run. She fell asleep in the stroller wearing her race number and missed the event.
Kids' Running Sweeps the Nation
But we are in a new era now, with children's running sweeping the nation. In response to the alarming statistics on childhood obesity that began to make headlines about a decade ago -- onethird of children nationwide are currently obese or overweight -- a rallying cry went out and the running community responded. Parents, teachers, coaches, physicians, schools, running clubs, running events, and corporate sponsors have come forth to create nothing less than a kids' running revolution, in which almost every community has some form of meaningful children's running going on. It might be a couple of dozen kids running with a parent leader at a community center or thousands of youngsters turning out for a menu of children's races sponsored by a major marathon. There are more than 100,000 children in the Texas-based Marathon Kids school program and 50,000 in the New York Road Runners Foundation school program.
I estimate that well over 1 million youngsters ages 5 to 12 are engaged in running. And with another 1.1 million teenagers running high school track and cross-country -- which show the greatest increases in participation of any sports, according to national statistics -- we have a historic movement gathering speed that in time could change the health portrait of the nation. Young runners already appear to be stemming the tide of childhood obesity, according to doctors and researchers I spoke with, but since many of the larger programs are fairly new, it's too soon to tell. Dr. Jennifer Sluder, a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles who's involved with a number of running programs, says when asked about the impact of running on childhood obesity: "Anecdotally, I know it's making a big difference, but, statistically, you have to do a large study over several years. There are some studies under way at the hospital on obesity and exercise and I think we'll have some concrete evidence soon."
The good news is still not good enough. What about the other children, the sedentary and obese kids who make up the sorry statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? We have, in effect, two societies of children: healthy, active, running kids who populate fields and parks and tracks working up a sweat, and the unhealthy masses with poor diets and expanding waistlines, many hidden from view as indoor spectators glued to computer and television screens. Unfortunately, the active society also has its extreme wing: parents and coaches who resemble the old me, pushing kids too hard and creating another set of alarming statistics regarding children's injury and burnout rates.
As a journalist writing about youth running for decades, I've seen the best and worst. I've been overcome by tears of joy watching children and teens run, run, run for the sweet satisfactions of reaching a goal, completing an arduous task, helping a team, and sharing in a pure and honest endeavor with friends. I've also been moved to tears of sadness seeing young runners imperiled by the demands of an oppressive coach or parent.
Dynamic Leaders Set the Pace
I hope this book provides a road map for doing the right thing. In probing for the best ways to engage youngsters in running and nurture their interest for the long term, I considered the children's running landscape as new territory to explore and approached it with a hopeful sense of discovery. I wanted to get close to dynamic people in the field. I went to Springfield, Virginia, to see a Healthy School award winner with a robust running program and to Durham, North Carolina, to see a youth track squad led by a pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Brenda Armstrong, who tests team members for blood pressure and lap tim...
