11-year-old Scottish boy Seb Jellema has started a running streak, vowing to beat Ron Hill's 52-year streak when he's 62

Shoot for the stars, land on the moon.

Did Ron Hill really run doing a mile in 27 minutes? Was that running in 1993? Sounds like this kid has 24 years less to do…

Yes. One thing, and one thing only. I can not draw (as one would do to create artwork) worth a damn. Everything else? Great at it.

Well, there COULD have been some DEETS that would make it mildly interesting. He's disabled or mentally challenged or any number of things. I found the title to be so uninteresting that there just HAD to be something more to the story that I couldn't garner from the thread title. Well...nope...just some 11-year-old kid saying he's going to run every day forever. Meh.

I looked at the list of active streakers. There are people who started when they were three years old.

Self imposed torture unless he has bad ocd

It’s a cute story, but it never should have made it to this level of media exposure. First of all, how many people are still passionate about what they were at age 11? If this boy’s streak miraculously lasts into his teens, it won’t make it out (of his teens). Puberty, new schools & friends, girls, and other teenage interests etc. will see to that. Secondly, fitness should be fun at his age, while he explores new activities and searches for what he will be passionate about in life. The media coverage, albeit positive now, puts pressure on both him and his parents. That will wear on an 11 year old and eventually make his daily run not fun. It’s great that he is interested in running and it’s history. It’s also great that he makes bold, age appropriate (childish) claims about what he is interested in. But like most things kids get fired up about, he should be able to put it down and move on to the next thing without the pressure of this exposure.

parents pushing this on him. sad.

Where do you see that? I see his parents allowing it and helping him do it but nothing looks like pushing to me.

Good luck to the kid trying to run everyday, when his regular route is flooded up to his knees and polar bears are floating by in 2070. Not to mention the risk of of being persecuted by his Chinese overlords for being outside during mandatory iPhone factory-work hours.

I'm in Scotland, and I find the media exposure this has achieved a bit odd. Someone has clearly reached out to the press to get them to run an article on this, and the BBC has picked up on it as a feel good story. Its actually a bit irresponsible as what the kid should be doing at that age is trying a few different sports with no pressure and getting plenty of rest. It's normally really difficult to get the media in Scotland interested in anything involving athletics or even local athletes producing actual promising results. The father seems to have social media links to a Dutch journalist who writes articles about sporty kids, so it's probably all very innocent.

We all know that running long distances in childhood has a high attrition rate. Parents can often try to push their kids as the next child prodigy. The article had a mention of the kid raising a lot of money for charity, but again that's likely to be the parents behind it. There's just too much virtue signalling going on for me to be comfortable with. The parents are both reasonable club level road runners but not from a track background, and I don't think it's something that a running club here would push an 11 year old to commit to.

As an aside, there's definitely an element of bible belt in parts of Scotland. Normally not Edinburgh and not overtly religious outwardly nowadays but its some sort of hark back to Presbyterian type behaviour rooted in colonial thinking of the past, where often the people giving money for charity now have less than the Africans (its always Africans) they are raising it for. It makes them feel superior and seems strongly tied to their self-identity, and the few Western European foreigners who move here seem to be prone to being drawn into this overt virtue signalling type behaviour, denouncing the evils of wealth and the virtues of socialism and high taxes, etc.. Often, the kids are recruited into this as it's part of the parents' virtue signalling.

Good for him for at least started a healthy streak…

Many kids of his age have, on the other hand, started another streak without even realising: eating junk food / playing video games / spending (wasting) time on social media...

And yet, here we are with tons of negative comments!

I love such incredible challenges, I hope he can

For some reason I think he can't

One of those 25oz. Fosters Lager cans will kick his Aussie ass when he's 15 and it'll all be over.

How are these mutually exclusive?

This Thread/Post is no different than the kid saving a $1 dollar every day for a few months and writing 11-year-old boy vows to defeat Elon Musk as the richest man in the world! Nobody is going to take the 11-year-old boy seriously until he invents some flying car or something that will actually produce serious wealth. I am not taking this kid serious until he actually has some real-life adversity that gets in the way of the possibility of keeping that streak going.

The boy's going to break Ron Hill's consecutive-day running streak. And he's going to run on the moon. And he's going to win a gold medal in the Olympics. And he's going to run, literally, for President of the United States, and win. And I'm going to milk this news story for all I can, and even profit from it if I can, all by putting my illegitimate son in the limelight against his will...because he's a good boy who does what Daddy tells him. Oh, he's going to win the lottery, too, and the Celtics are going to win the Super Bowl. What? The Celtics are in the NBA, not the NFL? Do you mean I am wrong in my prognosticating? At least some of the time? Even most of the time? Maybe all of the time? Still, ain't predicting easy?