Hawaii Measure to Outlaw Minors from entering "Long Distance Races"

I can't stand big government laws and regulation. But what I can't stand more are these hobby-jogger parents who think longer distance equals a better runner. A few seasons ago, I had a dad tell me I had to put his son on Varsity because he had finished 5 marathons. Kid couldn't break 21-minutes in the 5k, which isn't surprising considering he couldn't break 4:30.

ironside wrote:

zzzz wrote:

Why should the Hawaii state government care if someone chooses to throw away a XC season for a sub-2:20 marathon? They don't give a sh!t if anyone runs XC at all.

If you were to state the State of Hawaii should have different priorities, fine. If you were to state teenage Marathon racing is a good idea, I will disagree.

Yes, the State of Hawaii should not care about athlete development.

If you are strictly talking athlete development, then you wouldn't encourage teenage marathon racing. But why pick on the few that want to? Not everyone is on the development path towards being a pro runner. I didn't run my first marathon until I was 42 or 43, but I had a high school teammate who ran one in high school. He ran 3:47 or something. He was a JV runner on the cross country team, and just wanted to do one. Tell me how that marathon harmed him?

Also, remember this thread talking about the depth of the 1983 NYC marathon? That's what you get in terms of the depth of hobby joggers back when high schoolers running marathons was more common.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3777491

zzzz wrote:

ironside wrote:

If you were to state the State of Hawaii should have different priorities, fine. If you were to state teenage Marathon racing is a good idea, I will disagree.

Yes, the State of Hawaii should not care about athlete development.

If you are strictly talking athlete development, then you wouldn't encourage teenage marathon racing. But why pick on the few that want to? Not everyone is on the development path towards being a pro runner. I didn't run my first marathon until I was 42 or 43, but I had a high school teammate who ran one in high school. He ran 3:47 or something. He was a JV runner on the cross country team, and just wanted to do one. Tell me how that marathon harmed him?

When sub-16 &/or sub-17 5K XC runners race October Marathons, you can image many are affected.

ironside wrote:

zzzz wrote:

Yes, the State of Hawaii should not care about athlete development.

If you are strictly talking athlete development, then you wouldn't encourage teenage marathon racing. But why pick on the few that want to? Not everyone is on the development path towards being a pro runner. I didn't run my first marathon until I was 42 or 43, but I had a high school teammate who ran one in high school. He ran 3:47 or something. He was a JV runner on the cross country team, and just wanted to do one. Tell me how that marathon harmed him?

When sub-16 &/or sub-17 5K XC runners race October Marathons, you can image many are affected.

October is in middle of cross country race season for high school, when many are racing every week. No one on a high school cross country team is going to run an October marathon in middle of their season without the OK of their high school coach. If they get an OK, or they blow off getting an OK, it's an unusual circumstance, and not worth generalizing. I can only see this happening if they aren't on a team to begin with. In that case, they are free to do what they want. On the other hand, Cathy Schiro running a July marathon after track season, and well before cross country season was perfectly fine for her following cross country season. As I mentioned earlier, she won the Footlocker championship race that fall.

You meant to state: No one on your high school XC raced an October Marathon. I didn't type all these words regarding high school XC runners racing October Marathons for no reason. I had high school XC teammates race October Marathons. No high school XC coach would say, "Go ahead and race NYC or Chicago Marathon."

That's interesting, and I think it must be unusual, at least for a good high school team. What year(s) was that, and what school, or city or state if you want to be more general? And how did your team do at your league meet or regionals or state, if your team made it that far?

If your teammates cared more about how they would do in a marathon during their cross country race season, maybe they just should have run on their own, not on the team. In which case, they wouldn't be contributing to your team results anyway - you'd just have fewer teammates. Your issue is that some other kids on your team way back when, based on their own motivation, were more interested in their marathons than how their high school cross country team did. I have no problem with that. No one has to race cross country. If there were team goals that everyone bought into about doing well at post-season meets, your team wouldn't have had the problem.

The sad thing in this tread and most threads on kids running is adults arguing vehemently that they know what is best for kids and what the kids HAVE to do. Many such as Ironsides make the huge assumption that EVERY kid's goals in running are ,and should be, doing well in high school cross country and track and to be as good as possible in their 20's and 30's. Fine goals but you can't and shouldn't try to mandate that for everyone. In their eyes there is only 1 correct path, they decided it and if anyone takes a different path they are doing it wrong and endangering their health. What is maybe the saddest is that they use the argument that parents or coaches who don't follow that path are self serving and imposing their desires on the kids ...... which is exactly what they themselves are doing but insisting their way is the only correct way.

On the other side there are some who do push their kids way to far and too fast in pursuit of glory. They do that in every other sport as well. There are also some kids who push themselves too far and too fast on their own.

So when should a government step in to protect a population.

The government should only step in when their is an extreme health risk to the population. Kids running long distances have never been shown to be a significant health risk. Many studies have been done and statistics don't lie. The parentage of minors who experience physical problems requiring medical attention in long distance races is smaller (in cases of half marathons significantly smaller) than that of all other age groups. Purely from a statistical standpoint a better law for public health would be to limit middle age fat men from running these events as they are most likely to have health problems in the race.

Exactly right.

Asking whether it's a good idea for kids to run marathons (certainly an open question) is not the same thing as asking whether the government should prohibit it.