You’ve got to know how to compete and win, life goes too god-damned fast….

No one ever said life was fair. – Joan Crawford

You say a six-year-old ran a marathon. Really?

Casual observation of contemporary America suggests there are grownups who have yet to total 26.2 miles of running in their entire lifetimes.

I was twenty-six when I ran my first marathon.

I finished under three hours (2:59) for the first time the same week I saw this note in Sports Illustrated.

Reggie Heywood, 11, of Mesa, Ariz., surpassed the world age-group record for the one-hour distance run, covering 9 miles 773 yards. Reggie holds the national age-10 record for the marathon, 2:57:24, and recently added a record in the 5,000-meter run.

MAY 27, 1974 FACES IN THE CROWD

February 1, 1975, running diary entry reads: February 1. Saturday (164.5) 10:30 a.m. 60 degrees. Glendale, AZ. First Annual Glendale Thunderbird Half-Marathon. (Actual distance 13.9 mi.) Final time 1:27 flat. A great deal of poor and slow surface, developed three very large, painful & bloody blisters at the 9M mark and had to fight hard not to quit for a couple of miles. Finished 9th in open division and 25th overall. 100 finishers. Most grown men, I imagine.

Diary also notes I set personal records for 7M, 8M and 9M – never ran that far that fast before.

The famous Reggie Heywood was also in the race.

I knew the boy, having been a guest at his father’s high-altitude running camp the previous summer. Not long after he became one of ‘the faces in the crowd.’ Stay with me.

Because he couldn’t. I crushed the kid, broke him in the middle of the desert and just left the child out there for the dingoes.

Offer no apology. You toe the line, I expect we both fight to give it our absolute best. Truth is, that little boy is probably why I set personal records and grew giant blisters.

Hope you stayed with me, because I’ll never forget what he said, out among the scrub brush, when I felt him give up. When he surrendered.

“I don’t care what my Dad says,” he practically cried. “I don’t want to do this any more.”

He was twelve.

In his most recent Run Long, Run Healthy, Amby Burfoot asks:

Should teens run marathons?
The Students Run L.A. program has been enrolling Los Angeles teens into a training program and then marathon participation for more than 35 years now. But is this a good idea for adolescents? What about the injury risks? A new paper found that only 18% of the teens got injured–lower than what’s often observed for adults. In fact, the younger runners–in middle school–were less injured than the high school runners. “Ninety-nine percent of marathon participants completed the race.” Conclusion: “This study represents one of the largest descriptions of injury prevalence in adolescent distance running and highlights a lower injury rate than adults during marathon training.”  

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Controversy sparked on social media,

as six-year-old boy reported to have run a marathon

Parents of the boy face backlash for entering their child into the event –

as do organizers of the Flying Pig Marathon for allowing him to run.

BY THE RUNNER’S WORLD EDITORS 05/05/2022

Reports that a six-year-old boy ran the Flying Pig Marathon in Ohio on Sunday has caused public outcry.

Rainer Crawford, Rainer ran with his parents Ben and Kami Crawford and five siblings, including his 11-year-old sister Fillia.

His parents have been accused of being irresponsible and abusive on social media, and face backlash for bribing their son to keep moving when he was struggling.

His parents posted on Instagram that Rainer had been ‘struggling physically and wanted to take a break and sit every three minutes.’ They continued: ‘After 7 hours, we finally got to mile 20 and only to find an abandoned table and empty boxes. He was crying and we were moving slow, so I told him I’d buy him two sleeves [of Pringles] if he kept moving.’

In response to criticism, his parents published a further post to ‘lay out facts for the publish conversation’. They said: ‘We have never forced any of our children to run a marathon and we cannot even imagine that as feasible practically or emotionally.

They went onto explain that Rainer had wanted to run the race and they had granted him the opportunity to do so: ‘This year after begging to join us we allowed our six-year-old to train and attempt it.

‘Both parents gave him a 50/50 chance of completing it and were ready to pull the plug at any moment if he requested it or if we viewed his safety at risk. We asked him numerous times if he wanted to stop, and he was VERY clear that his preference was to continue. We did not see any sign of heat exhaustion or dehydration and honoured his request to keep on going.’

In the post, the parents also responded to reports from other runners taking part who had said they had seen Rainer crying on multiple occasions. ‘Yes there were tears. He had a fall and every single member of our family has cried during marathons. These experiences were very limited compared to what has been reported and despite the incredible physical and emotional difficulty of running a marathon the amount of his crying is comparable to what we would have experienced had we stayed home on a Sunday morning.’ You can read their full statement here.

Race organizers are also under fire for allowing Rainer to enter in the first place, as well as for allowing his three siblings who are under 18 to enter. Indeed, organizers had broken its own rule which stated that only participants aged 18+ could enter the Flying Pig Marathon.

However, in response to the criticism, race director Iris Simpson Bush published an open letter yesterday assuming full responsibility for their decision. It said:

‘Please allow me to share reasons for the decision to allow a minor to participate in this year’s race.

‘This decision was not made lightly because the father was determined to do the race with his young child regardless. They had done it as bandits in prior years before we had any knowledge and we knew he was likely to do so again.

‘The intent was to try to offer protection and support if they were on our course (Medical, Fluids and Replenishment).

‘Our decision was intended for some amount of safety and protection for the child. The family finished the race after the formal closure of the race course.

‘I assume full responsibility for the decision and accept that it was not the best course of action. Our requirement of 18+ for participation in the marathon will be strictly observed moving forward.’

The story has gained wide-spread attention, with pro distance Kara Goucher among those to post their condemnation on social media. She said: ‘I don’t know who needs to hear this but a six-year-old cannot fathom what a marathon will do to them physically. A six-year-old does not understand what embracing misery is. A six-year-old who is “struggling physically” does not realize they have the right to stop and should.

‘I’m not questioning motivation or saying it is bad parenting. But as an Olympic athlete, I promise you this is not good for the child. Children are children. Let them run around, but as the parent you need to protect their growing bodies and their young minds.’

Ben and Kami Crawford have undertaken gruelling endurance challenges with their children before. In 2020, they published a book about being the largest family to hike the Appalachian Trail and have gained a large following on social media.

Ben Crawford has since posted on his Facebook that ‘they are going to lock down some of our socials for a while… Too much hate and dissension. Going to wait a week and see if it dies down.’

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Children of the Marathon Recall a Forgotten Time

By Liz Robbins for The New York Times. October 26, 2009.

Unlike most 8-year-olds touring New York City, Wesley Paul began his sightseeing on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, standing elbow to knee with 4,822 strangers.

Paul was ready to run the 1977 New York City Marathon, and while the magnitude of the moment did not faze him — it was his fourth marathon, after all — the scale of his surroundings did.

Having come from Columbia, Mo., and not even 5 feet tall, Paul gazed in awe at the nearly 700-foot towers of the bridge. “I didn’t know people could build stuff like that,” Paul, 40, recalled recently.

Paul ran without parental supervision across five bridges and five boroughs — watched by relatives standing on sidewalks — to finish the race in a startling 3 hours 31 seconds. He is the youngest marathoner recorded in the marathon’s 40-year history but not the only child to become infatuated with a distance many adults find torturous, even life-altering.

Scott Black was exhilarated in 1979 as a 9-year-old. “People were holding out their hands, cheering me on,” Black, 39, said. “I remember there being TV cameras on me, a blimp for a portion of the race. I remember the crowds going crazy.”

Howie Breinan was exhausted but euphoric when he finished in 3:26:34 in 1978, also at age 9.

“I was hurting at the end, but I also remember the feeling of running in the park,” Breinan, 40, said of Central Park, “and what kind of a crazy boost of adrenaline I got from the fans.”

The adventures of Paul, Black and Breinan offer a glimpse into a forgotten aspect of the running boom of the late 1970s. Preternaturally self-disciplined, they were among about 75 children (ages 8 to 13) who tackled the early years of the New York City Marathon in a time of novelty and naïveté.

Organizers were uneasy about young runners, but it was not until 1981, records show, that age 16 became the requirement. New York’s official minimum age became 18 in 1988, after an advisory set by the International Marathon Medical Directors Association in the early 1980s, and reasserted in 2001.

With no conclusive study, physicians still debate risks to children who compete in marathons, like muscular-skeletal injuries, stunted growth, burnout, parental pressures and the ability to handle heat stress.

Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of the New York Road Runners, said her organization endorsed children running only shorter races. “We are all about people running and being physically active for their entire lives,” she said.

Some marathons — Houston and Twin Cities in Minnesota — allow teenagers or admit younger runners on a case-by-case basis. Los Angeles has a program for schoolchildren ages 12 to 18.

“There’s no real medical data to say that kids should or shouldn’t run,” said Dr. William O. Roberts, the Twin Cities Marathon medical director.

“If it’s a kid’s decision to do it, they train well and they’re supervised, then there’s no harm to it.”

Paul, Black and Breinan began running as a chance to spend time with their fathers. Fathers themselves now, their perspectives have changed.

“I wouldn’t do anything differently,” said Black, a senior trial lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission. “I find that running has defined me as a person; a lot of my self-esteem has come from it. I don’t regret anything. That said, as a parent, I wouldn’t push my kid to that.”

Paul’s concerns were more safety-related. “I don’t think I would let my 8-year-old run New York City alone,” he said. “It’s just a different environment.”

The three have not run the New York City Marathon since the 1980s; they sustained injuries before they were 20, then concentrated on their studies. Only Breinan, who teaches chemistry and coaches cross-country at Glastonbury High School in Connecticut, still competes (in long-distance trail runs). He ran six marathons and six 100-kilometer races as a teenager and younger (3:18:29 was his New York best, in 1979).

As a child, he could not sit still, his mother, Eleanor, said; his daily run helped him channel his energy. “I got lost in it,” Breinan said. On weekends he loved going with his father, Edward, and his training buddies, who were swept up by running’s popularity.

Paul’s father, Ailo, was his only training partner while growing up in Missouri. “I was in a place where there wasn’t anything to do,” Paul said. “No cable, Nintendo, Wii. It was either go out with him, or that’s it.”

Paul first ran with his father at age 3, when the family briefly lived in Queens, and he credits Ailo for motivating him.

“Most of the time, he was trying to prevent me from overdoing it,” said Paul, who set more than 15 world and national age records. “For me, it was always just a matter of internal challenges, doing something that nobody else had done.”

His Olympic aspirations waned at 14, when he developed tendinitis in his knees from Osgood-Schlatter disease. According to a July 2000 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, that injury can be a consequence of excessive training, for both children and adults.

Paul still ran a 2:38 personal best at 15, in the Houston Marathon. The next year, he fractured his knee when a car backed into him while he was running. He never recovered. “I don’t think it was an unhealthy situation; I know that there were people out there that thought that it was,” Paul said. “The moment I said I didn’t want to do it anymore, my parents were fine with it.”

Black began running when he was 6. One day, his father, Martin, a guidance counselor at the College of Staten Island, dropped him off at a stop sign and suggested he run the quarter-mile home. Black repeated the ritual, and soon his father entered him in local races, even petitioning in public hearings for his entry. Black ran the New Jersey Shore marathon when he was 8.

At 13, he had put himself on a strict high-carbohydrate diet, and at 14 ran his personal best in Philadelphia, 2:53:49. He ran New York three times in high school, never training more than 50 miles a week.

“I think people thought it was weird and cool,” Black said. “I felt special among my friends because I was not a gifted athlete in terms of skill sports.”

Martin Black has often asked himself if he pushed his son too hard. “It seems to me pretty obvious that it’s impossible to get a kid to do something like that if they didn’t want to do it,” Martin concluded, adding that his younger son, Eric, “retired” at 8.

“We never thought that Scott was going to be a world-class runner,” he added. “If Wesley Paul was in the race, he wasn’t going to beat him.”

While Black and Breinan were featured in the local news media, Paul was featured in running magazines. In 1979, Paul had a children’s book published about him. By then, he had become a celebrity in Taiwan, where his parents lived in the 1950s after moving from China. There, he and Ailo put on running clinics and started clubs.

Paul ran more than 40 marathons before he was 16. Now a partner at the law firm Michelman & Robinson, he says he has only a half-hour to run, and prefers treadmill interval workouts. At 6 feet 2, he also competes in recreational basketball leagues, while sponsoring three teams of his own.

Pre-adult injuries have not completely stopped Paul, Black and Breinan. “I have bad knees now,” Breinan said, insisting that running was not to blame because he also played other sports.

Black developed a stress fracture in his hip before the London Marathon in 1991, and that was that.

“I could run up to a certain distance without having pain, and beyond that, I said I’m happy that I could still run,” he said.

Sunday’s New York City Marathon makes him sentimental and sad. “Every year, it’s very hard for me to watch it,” he said. “Every year, I say, ‘Why don’t I do it?’ It’s not worth it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to run anymore.”

Paul has no qualms about sitting out. “We’ve done it,” he said. “There’s no question we could do it again if we wanted to.”

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Here’s the link to Amby’s most excellent “newsletter.” It’s for the thinking runner who hopes to improve.

https://mailchi.mp/224f7210029f/new-this-week-run-long-run-healthy?e=ead774d3ad

Oh, one more thing.

‘After 7 hours, we finally got to mile 20 and only to find an abandoned table and empty boxes. He was crying and we were moving slow, so I told him I’d buy him two sleeves [of Pringles] if he kept moving.’

If it takes you over seven hours to get to the twenty-mile mark, are you really “running” a marathon?

If the forced march aspect for social media fame isn’t child abuse, certainly two sleeves of Pringles should be.

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Penultimate line. When I was old and little girls in tutus fluttered by, I heard no apologies. Just the nature of things.

Bottom line. Like Miss Crawford told her kid, life goes fast. No need to rush it.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/apr/12/7-year-old-pilots-dream-ends-in-disaster-girl-her/