As our club organised the Brockagh Burst Winter/Spring League race today, we had a good field of juniors partaking. The ‘short course’ was right on the limit of the distance and climb allowed by WMRA (World Mountain Running Association) for the under-15 age groups and included some features may have a coach unaccustomed to hill running raise an eye brow or two: a very steep grassy bank, some exposure to cold winds and sleet and a steep descent on grass, bit of rock and lots of fast fire-road.

Our junior coaching team had done a superb job preparing the squad by taking them out over the course on Friday so they had familiarised themselves with what lay ahead. One of our senior runners also ran with the pack and a special marshal manned the junior turn-off. So basic safety was not an issue.

What really impressed me was the reviews after: I was told that the juniors enjoyed this type of experience much more than training on the track (not to say they don’t enjoy that) because it’s ‘more of an adventure’. Thinking back to my own childhood I can understand why – I was brought up with radio orienteering (meaning running by torchlight through pathless forests and scrubs never knowing what you’ll step on next). So coming into mountain running I had no concerns about the terrain. These juniors going up a steep grassy bank will hopefully be more like Kilian Jornet in the way their minds scale challenges: they’ll see a hill in a road race or cross-country and think ‘that’s not a hill’. They’ll run over  muddy cross-country course and think ‘bit slippy but nothing like that hill race’.

As coaches and parents, we set the parametres for what children see as normal and what they see as extreme. Hill running really is under-rated in what it can do for the physical and athletic development of children. Psychologically children are generally adventurous and open to the outdoors and physically they are at a stage where motor skill development is rapid. So do we want a generation who see even a trail as extreme because it’s ‘uneven’ or a generation who have no fear of any terrain or any gradient. They can still grow up to be road, cross-country or track runners if they so wish or if their obvious talent is so great that they have to move off the hills to fully match their achievements to their talents. But it seems to me – not just on today’s evidence – that the trails and hills should be a core part of children’s running experience in the formative years of their athletic career because it is more natural, more physically challenging, more diverse and varied and simply more fun. The strict ‘against the clock and no variables’ type of running of track and road is very much a sport modelled on an adult mindset. There’s time enough for juniors to make the shift to this once they pass into our ranks.