Helping children train for a 5K

[Princess Roo]

Any suggestions? My oldest son (6.5yrs) wants to start running now that DH and I are. There is a 5K fun run at his school in 4 months that I thought might be a nice goal for him, but I have no idea the best way for him to "train". I learned to run by starting at 30 minutes of fast walking (which he can do) and inserting longer run intervals. Is that best for kids, too? He's in good shape. I think he'd enjoy more just running and increasing the distance progressively more. (And that would be better for DH and I, as he could start our runs with us and then we could drop him by the house before finishing.)
Do you have to worry about running shoes for kids at that distance, or can his school sneakers do the job?
Anything else I should be thinking about?

 

[rubato]

I trained my 11 year old son for a 10k this April. He is not much of a runner, but I had him at 1 mile every other day before we started. Then, when we started training, we did 20 minutes of intervals with a 4 minute run/1 minute walk. We ran 3 days a week. I added 5 minutes to the 3rd run only every week until he was at 50 minutes. He finished his first 10k in 71 minutes, but had enough left at the end to sprint. I didn't want to push him too hard because he would just want to stop training. He really enjoyed himself, was super proud of his accomplishment and instantly said he wanted to run a half. Of course, within a week, he had recanted that. Like I said, he's not much of a runner.

 

[walkdmc]

My DS10 and DS7 just ran the Disney Halloween 5K and did great. They finished in about 35 minutes. About 3-4 nights/week we went to the local high school track and ran. We did that the entire Summer and the kids gradually built up their distance. They'd run 1/2 a lap then walk 1/2 lap x 4 laps, then 1 lap run/walk 1/2 lap x 4, gradually building up to 4 straight laps then adding 1/2 lap a week.

They never ran an entire 5K until we got to Disney and they didn't have any problems.

We did take our kids to a running shop and ponied up $100 for Nike Zooms and $65 for Sauconys for the 7 yo. They never complained of pain in their feet/legs and if they're going to be running, I'd invest in good shoes. They've had the shoes for 6 months and are using them to train for our local Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot (another 5K).

Just wanted to add we loved the track. It has a rubber top so it's better on the joints and it's flat so if one of us wanted to take a break and sit on bleachers, no worries. Plus, there were always athletes of all shapes, sizes and ages which was inspiring for all of us.

 

[Sarah_Rose]

I coached with Girls on the Run (which is a national program that "trains" girls aged 8-11 to run a 5K - along with plenty of healthy lifestyles and self esteem stuff) for four seasons. The girls ran twice a week with us and we used the school track - we trained using time, not distance, but encouraged the girls to try to run more laps than they ran last time. We also used lots of fun "lap counters" to encourage them to run... everything from making up a funny story and adding more on each lap, to giving out stickers or colored rubber bands for each lap.

Anyway, we started out with "as many laps as you can run in 10 minutes" and worked our way up to 45 minutes over the course of 10 weeks. Very few of the girls actually ran a 5K distance before the actual 5K, but every girl I coached over four seasons finished the 5K race!

 

[Princess Roo]

Thank you for the suggestions!
Yesterday I was running my long run (8 miles) on the track, since Savannah is supposed to be a very flat course and all my running has been on hills. DS asked if he could come with me, and it worked out great. He brought a book to read when he didn't feel like running, but he was actually pretty entertained by the flag football game going on in the middle, too. When he felt like joining me for a lap, he did. The first 4 laps he did (with breaks between) he could keep my pace and then I did a few at his pace and he did a few by himself for a total of 2.5 miles for him. He was really proud of himself and had fun. We'll try to hit the track at least once a week, I think.