Training 8 year old kid

Yep, my 7 year old is in a XC program and enjoys the drills. In fact, he has taught me how to do them since I never had any exposure to them. Good fun.

As an aside, I go to the meets and see kids age 6 and 7 absolutely crushing their races, I mean sub 7 minute pace on tough courses and they're obliterating the competition. I have serious doubts these kids are going to stick with it as they get older.

I've seen kids at the track. They run short distances are pretty fast and are coached by a harda$$

Kids are like dogs, their instinct is to run fast for short bursts, recover, do it again. Play up on that and build his endurance.

I find when too many kids run together, their instinct is to race. So inviting a friend could be counter productive. Or invite strategically. Most kids get bored at the track so intervals around a lake would be a great workout.

We agree that the most important part is having fun.

I realize that the training load in other sports can be very different. I come from swimming, at that age you can train 6 hours a week, then until 10-12 hours at 11 years old. (I did this myself, and when you are motivated with the friends of the club, it's cool). A lot is played out in the very first years of swimming.

In running things seem to be a bit different.

Do you have any other remarks concerning the combination with other sports?

Let your kid be a kid. No training - just unstructured tag sessions, games and fun runs. There is a reason why we are seeing overuse injuries earlier and earlier with our children and it's because of starting structured training at a young age.

where the heck do you guys live that have XC races for 6 and 7yo kids?

I grew up in SoCal and now live in SF bay, ran in HS and college, and I have never heard of formal youth XC events or teams.

My kids all played soccer, never trained for track. 1 won a state 4x400 championship, 1 won a state TAAF state mile championship at 13. Lots of running in soccer, enough to compete at a decent level in track and good for teamwork. 3 of the 4 still run - 5ks up to marathons

The narrative that kids should not do any races or training at young age is garbage. Vast majority of these young phenoms who flame out usually happens from training alone and likely coached by their parent who isn't qualified to do so. The other portion of runners get overbearing parents. Just don't be either. Especially true for young girls. Kids don't want to go run around the block with their parent or even alone. That's boring. Doing with it 50 of your peers and then goofing off after practice is more fun, social. Running is just a bonus.

Just in the Boulder area:

Gouchers have their elementary school kid running XC. Ritz has his elementary school kid running XC. Sam Chalenga has BOTH of his elementary school kids running XC (one is only 4 years old). The youth running groups in that area like Boulder Mountain Warriors do basic base mileage, workouts 2x a week. They've been doing it for many years with success.

In addition, there are massive efforts to get kids interested in Cross Country in Boulder region:

https://www.teamboco.com/#/mountainlionsxcprogram/

Running at a young age with limited bouts (2x a week) and racing can be fun contrary to popular belief.

best coast wrote:

where the heck do you guys live that have XC races for 6 and 7yo kids?

I grew up in SoCal and now live in SF bay, ran in HS and college, and I have never heard of formal youth XC events or teams.

I'm in Maryland and my son's program has 6 meets and you see the same XC clubs at all the meets, maybe 10 or so clubs in total, from all over the state. Most of the meets have a 6 and under race, followed by a 7-8, 9-10, etc. Several hundred participants in total at each meet. On one hand that sounds like a lot, but it looks like this it for the entire state.

The first meet I went to was shocked, 6 and 7 year old's wearing spikes and running at a very high intensity.