Why Kids Should Not Train to Race Year Round

In youth sport after youth sport, the year-round club model is taking hold for children before they reach their tenth birthday. Indeed, making the club team for sports such as soccer and softball is more important than the local high school team for many athletes. The athletes that participate on the clubs often receive very high levels of coaching, though that is not a given. AAU basketball, for example, is more about showcasing talent for colleges than for skills development. 

The single sport emphasis of today's athletes arguably hurts their athletic development, and actually leads to more injuries. In a study presented by authors NA Jayanthi , C. Pinkham, and A. Luke, titled THE RISKS OF SPORTS SPECIALIZATION AND RAPID GROWTH IN YOUNG ATHLETES, they found a significant correlation towards specialized athletes and injury rates. Another study, done by the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM), supports the same conclusion, arguing that the increase in overuse injuries is reaching epidemic proportions.

In both studies, it was the level of organized activities that correlated most with injury rates. That organizational bent usually was the result of early specialization, which added time to the training activity on the assumption that more and early work would lead to improved skills. It also led to highly repetitive drills that created overuse injuries.

In recent NFL drafts, 80 percent of the players taken in the first round were multi-sport competitors in high school. I've talked with coaches, both at the D1 level and at high schools, most prefer athletes with a varied sports background. Rick Riley, in a conversation we had last year, suggested part of his success in running came from the varied activities - swimming, hiking, bucking hay - that he did as a youth. Each built different muscles and trained the nervous system to respond to new inputs and made the whole stronger in the process.

The legendary Dr. Jack Daniels concurred, writing in his book Daniel's Running Formula that "all runners can benefit from breaks in training." Bill Bowerman, as reported in Kenny Moore's excellent Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, despised indoor track, feeling that it interfered with the necessary base building activity that a runner need to engage in while recharging the system. After the Munich Olympics, he gave Steve Prefontaine months off, telling him to just keep moving until the fire came back.

Which leads us to a second concern about year-round training and racing. Along side of the injury issues are recurring stories of athletes burned out by the process. When the simple act of running becomes a constant grind of training, with each run measured by the success of the training stimulus and not the pleasure, it turns to work. For some, that hard work is it's own reward, but the number of individuals that can function on a constant diet of stress is minimal. Most kids break down, either physically or emotionally. We lose two-thirds of our athletes from junior high to high school this way.

There is a season for everything and every season has an end. For too many kids, the training begins to resemble the ordeal of Sisyphus, forever pushing a boulder up the mountain, but never destined to reach the top. At some point, the labors must be over and the hero gets both the rewards of the effort, and a chance to rest briefly on his or her laurels with the competitive fire banked until it's needed again. When it is, the passion will return and the athlete returns to the task renewed and stronger.

To quote Pat Tyson, head coach at Gonzaga, speaking of the goals for young runners, "Number one is just to gain a passion for running. To love the morning, to love the trail, to love the pace on the track. And if some kid gets really good at it, that's cool too."

It's a great quote and shows that Pat Tyson has his priorities solidly founded on bedrock principles. There's a reason he won multiple state championships at Mead High School and is beloved by his athletes. It's not my favorite quote, though. My favorite from Pat shows how uncomplicated it can be and simultaneously deep.

Love the run.

Meeting Heroes and Friends

John L. Parker introduced me to Quentin Cassidy and, along the way, set the standard for running fiction. For two generations, Once a Runner has inspired runners seeking the answer to breaking through to the next level and Parker delivered it in Cassidy's story of commitment, sacrifice, and work, and then he delivered the dream in a racing scene that hasn't been equaled since. Now, in Racing the Rain, Parker is back to tell the story of the childhood Cassidy, before the track, when he flew barefoot ahead of the thunderclouds

Jack Welch sits down across from the great runners in history, and with a hint of the beatnik, teases out the real-life tales and puts them into a book so the rest of us can look them in the eyes and get their measure. Not just the immortals like Rodgers and Decker, but the rest of the greats like Patti Catalano and the elusive Gerry Lindgren. He put them all in When Running Was Young and So Were We and won the Track and Field Writers Association honors for best track book in 2014.

The Diamond League meet happens in less than a month at storied Hayward Field at what’s now known as Track Town, USA. The best in the world will step into the arena to measure themselves against each other and their most relentless opponents, the clock and tape.

A group of us will be there to watch, John and Jack among them.  Few other visiting writers, some of whom will be working to build an ambitious new history of Eugene. Hopefully, one will be Kenny Moore. Kenny Moore, author of Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, writes in a beguilingly smooth style that sits you down next to Bill and entertains you as he leads the exploration into America’s most famous track coach.

Don Kardong may make the trip, if organizing another successful Bloomsday didn't wear him out.

And me. I'll be there. Some of these folks are heroes. I can ask almost anyone for anything, but I couldn't bring myself to ask John Parker to read Finishing Kick. When I wrote the novel, I set it deliberately as the women's answer to Once a Runner and tried to make the racing as inspiring, the lessons hidden within story, and the joy of running flow off the page. I finally sent him a copy last month, after I read a review copy of Racing the Rain.

Some of them, like Jack, are becoming friends.

The Pre Classic won't be the only meet that I'll be attending this month that has heroes and friends, though. Tuesday I headed out to watch a junior high meet. I coached some of these kids in cross country and think the world of them. A couple of them came by to say "hi" before their race, and then stood around wondering what else to say. Me, too. It gets easier, I've discovered, as they get older and graduate. In the meantime, I get to be their biggest fan and cheer them on while I add to my happy memories.

The coach of the middle school team is a running buddy. He manages all the kids with a humor that more of us should emulate when life gets screwy. The coach of the high school, Tim Gundy, is also a friend, and a heck of a runner. I haven't seen him all season, but I'll catch up with him and the distance kids at the district meet.

Tim won't have time to chat - that will have to wait until the summer. For now, he's focused on his kids. It says something that the kids universally love him. Tim is much more than a track or cross country coach. I talked to Pat Tyson, the coach at Gonzaga University. The two of them share a lot of character traits, humility and compassion high on that list.

The high school coaching gig doesn't have the cache of coaching the Buffaloes and, with rare exceptions, most of the athletes won't see their names emblazoned on Running Times. It's here that the youngsters learn to dream and begin to believe. Some, a very few, will achieve great heights. All will care, and never more than during these years.

In the glitz of the Prefontaine Classic, it becomes easy to forget that all these athletes started someplace away from the glitz and media attention. It began with a passion, and probably a good coach, and a little luck. Most will have picked out a hero or two to inspire them and dream of reaching the Olympic oval or famous tracks of Europe, the Armory, or Eugene. For those that make it, stories will be told of their exploits, the daring tactics, or the incredible level of commitment. Writers will flock to them. Fans will cheer.

One or two of the high schoolers may make it to Eugene to race someday. Most won't even if they have the burning passion, the work ethic, the guts. Not all of my heroes sit in rarified heights - I'll be cheering for those kids and their coaches, and telling some of their stories, too.