Should Children Run?

Of course children should run! Running should be as much a part of children’s lives as walking, skipping, playing tag, and so on. It should be a normal part of their play. For preteens, play can and should be the major source of physical activity. Some researchers have estimated that when kids are left to their own devices, they’ll cover as much as six miles a day on foot. Obviously, they don’t cover this distance all at once, and it’s a lot different from when an adult goes out for a six-mile run or walk, but that’s OK. At that age, most experts would agree, what you want is for your children to be active in a variety of activities that they enjoy.
Of course, many kids aren’t active. The average American teenager watches 22 hours of TV a week. Keep that in mind as you ponder these scary statistics: Only one-third of children ages 6 to 17 meet minimum standards of cardiovascular fitness. Of children between the ages of 5 and 8, 40 percent are obese, meaning that they weigh at least 20 percent more than they should. According to one survey of children in grades 4 to 12, 49 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls get nine hours or less of physical activity each week. When you consider that these estimates likely include a lot of time standing around on a ball field during gym classes, the figures seem even worse.
Now the question of whether children should run changes. Should children run in an organized way, for fitness, the way that adults do? That one’s a bit trickier to answer.

The Chase Corporate Challenge Series

Like the Race for the Cure Series, the Chase Corporate Challenge Series does a great job of luring new runners into the sport. It exposes occasional fitness runners to the racing scene and thereby shows them how fun it can be.
The Chase Corporate Challenge Series consists of runs in 16 cities in the United States, plus two overseas. The series culminates in a national final held on Park Avenue in New York City in October. In all, more than 175,000 runners take part in the series each year. Each race features team awards as well as individual recognition, such as first executive finisher. Each race is 3.5 miles long—a good challenging distance for the serious racers, but also a conquerable distance for the more casual runner.
In addition to introducing casual runners to the fun of racing, the Chase Corporate Challenge Series benefits runners in other ways. As you probably know, balancing your running with your work life can be tough. Work-based programs such as the Chase Series encourage employers to see their employees as more than just employees. They help show what employees do in the rest of their lives, and how important those pursuits are to them, and how having a healthy, rewarding life outside of work adds to, rather than detracts from, performance on the job.

The Race for the Cure Series

For you rock fans out there, sorry, but this series has nothing to do with that gloomy British band, The Cure. What it has to do with is a heck of a lot more important—finding a cure for breast cancer.
The Race for the Cure is the largest series of 5K runs in the United States. In 1997, the series was held in 77 cities throughout the country and included nearly half a million participants. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation organizes this series of runs; proceeds from the runs provide funding for local and national breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment programs.
In case you haven’t noticed by now, I like it when there’s a connection between running and the rest of society. Apparently, a lot of others do, too, because The Race for the Cure Series gets bigger and bigger every year. Just one event in the series, the Washington, DC one, is the single largest 5K in the country. Vice President Gore and his wife, Tipper, regularly run it, in part because of their family’s history of breast cancer. That link exists for me, too, because my mom has had breast cancer. Many participants in these events are running in honor or memory of a breast cancer patient. Some in the field are even breast cancer survivors.