terps wrote:
This reeks of a parent with undisclosed motives. I see absolutely no benefit in allowing a 9 year old to run a marathon. Even as a kid, coming through at 4 hours and 20 min, does not exactly make him a wunderkind. His father says he doesn't want to concentrate on anything too early, yet the article says the kid "regularly runs cross-country and road races between 3K and 10K in distance."
No matter what the father says, no kid consciously comes up with that type of racing plan. My experience is that 99% of the time, a parent is in the kid's ear, 24-7, planting the seed, until it magically becomes the kid's brilliant idea, then they play it off like he or she came up with it.
I coach youth runners and see this all the time. We attempt to develop kids over years. Then these type of parents say they are not pushing their kids into road racing, yet somehow the kids are signed up for 10k's 3 times a month at ages 7-10. What are the kids doing, mailing in their lunch money and forging parental signatures? The parents honestly talk longingly about age group records, but then the kids come out and run average 800m and 1500 times at the track meets, and sit by themselves because their parents need them to be focussed. The kids, when you talk to them amongst their peers in practice, never show the same enthusiasm for these weekend jaunts that their parents project onto them.
I don't get what these parents are trying to prove. As a coach, you can't reason with them, they just talk in circles about not burning the kids out, but somehow plop down $25 for the kid to race another 10k the next weekend.
I think they are these helicopter parents, wanting to control the kids "fun," almost brainwashing the kid into believing it is all just a great time, waking up at 6 am on a Saturday to race every weekend, until they run like crap, then they get an earful. The parents train the kids on their own for those races, then bring them to our practices, and I ask what they've done this week, and am just dumbfounded that these little kids have no recovery built into training, nevermind their lives in general. I see it play out every week.
Just let the kids run appropriate distances for their age groups with their friends. The parents can run their own races. You don't have to micromanage their lives. Sign the kid up for a youth team, bring the him or her to practice to interact, joke around, train with other kids, and just be a kid.