what age should/could kid start distance running?

Ho Hum wrote:

Why is it bad to train for running but totally fine to train for swimming/gymnastics/soccer (which is itself mostly running)?

Excellent point! Do you think Archie Manning had his 3 kids doing gymnastics and soccer and swimming? Of course not. If you want to excel at something, you have to start early and focus on it. If you want to be mediocre, then be "well rounded" and do 3 or 4 different sports and hope that you have 1 in 10 million talent like Webb or Flannagan and can get away with just fooling around until you are halfway through high school.

Soccer in Fall/Spring, Swimming Winter/Summer.

4

never

To clueless "gamer". Are you serious? Soccer and gymnastics and swimming are perfect for developing agility and flexibility. Go ahead and run the 10-14 year olds as many miles as you can force them (parent them) and you'll find an unhappy 16 year old, who will drop out of the sport as soon as he/she gets a backbone. In the meantime, you will have raised a kid with the famous distance runner lack of flexibility, limiting stride length for starters.

Some people are amazingly ignorant.

Take may advice if it's a male - NEVER

Unless you want to send him down a road of constant depression, pain, agony, torment and hell, and self loathing.

I cannot believe the numder of serious answers on here - looks like the average mental age is about 3!

Start the kid on ultras then move on to extreme sports when she starts school!

how about let kids do whatever they want

running a lot too early for a child can cause growth stunts... wait till middle school to get them running a little longer but not training too hard

for a girl it doesnt really matter until she hits puberty anyways, just get the base in while in middle school to high school then start the training once she doesn't have boyish features anymore (age 13ish, maybe a bit older)