Unlike most 8-year-olds touring New York City, Wesley Paul began his sightseeing on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, standing elbow to knee with 4,822 strangers.
Paul was ready to run the 1977 New York City Marathon, and while the magnitude of the moment did not faze him — it was his fourth marathon, after all — the scale of his surroundings did.
Having come from Columbia, Mo., and not even 5 feet tall, Paul gazed in awe at the nearly 700-foot towers of the bridge. “I didn’t know people could build stuff like that,” Paul, 40, recalled recently.
Paul ran without parental supervision across five bridges and five boroughs — watched by relatives standing on sidewalks — to finish the race in a startling 3 hours 31 seconds. He is the youngest marathoner recorded in the marathon’s 40-year history but not the only child to become infatuated with a distance many adults find torturous, even life-altering.
Scott Black was exhilarated in 1979 as a 9-year-old. “People were holding out their hands, cheering me on,” Black, 39, said. “I remember there being TV cameras on me, a blimp for a portion of the race. I remember the crowds going crazy.”
Howie Breinan was exhausted but euphoric when he finished in 3:26:34 in 1978, also at age 9.
“I was hurting at the end, but I also remember the feeling of running in the park,” Breinan, 40, said of Central Park, “and what kind of a crazy boost of adrenaline I got from the fans.”
The adventures of Paul, Black and Breinan offer a glimpse into a forgotten aspect of the running boom of the late 1970s. Preternaturally self-disciplined, they were among about 75 children (ages 8 to 13) who tackled the early years of the New York City Marathon in a time of novelty and naïveté.
Organizers were uneasy about young runners, but it was not until 1981, records show, that age 16 became the requirement. New York’s official minimum age became 18 in 1988, after an advisory set by the International Marathon Medical Directors Association in the early 1980s, and reasserted in 2001.
With no conclusive study, physicians still debate risks to children who compete in marathons, like muscular-skeletal injuries, stunted growth, burnout, parental pressures and the ability to handle heat stress.
Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of the New York Road Runners, said her organization endorsed children running only shorter races. “We are all about people running and being physically active for their entire lives,” she said.
Some marathons — Houston and Twin Cities in Minnesota — allow teenagers or admit younger runners on a case-by-case basis. Los Angeles has a program for schoolchildren ages 12 to 18.
“There’s no real medical data to say that kids should or shouldn’t run,” said Dr. William O. Roberts, the Twin Cities Marathon medical director.
“If it’s a kid’s decision to do it, they train well and they’re supervised, then there’s no harm to it.”
Paul, Black and Breinan began running as a chance to spend time with their fathers. Fathers themselves now, their perspectives have changed.
“I wouldn’t do anything differently,” said Black, a senior trial lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission. “I find that running has defined me as a person; a lot of my self-esteem has come from it. I don’t regret anything. That said, as a parent, I wouldn’t push my kid to that.”
Paul’s concerns were more safety-related. “I don’t think I would let my 8-year-old run New York City alone,” he said. “It’s just a different environment.”
The three have not run the New York City Marathon since the 1980s; they sustained injuries before they were 20, then concentrated on their studies. Only Breinan, who teaches chemistry and coaches cross-country at Glastonbury High School in Connecticut, still competes (in long-distance trail runs). He ran six marathons and six 100-kilometer races as a teenager and younger (3:18:29 was his New York best, in 1979).
As a child, he could not sit still, his mother, Eleanor, said; his daily run helped him channel his energy. “I got lost in it,” Breinan said. On weekends he loved going with his father, Edward, and his training buddies, who were swept up by running’s popularity.
Paul’s father, Ailo, was his only training partner while growing up in Missouri. “I was in a place where there wasn’t anything to do,” Paul said. “No cable, Nintendo, Wii. It was either go out with him, or that’s it.”
Paul first ran with his father at age 3, when the family briefly lived in Queens, and he credits Ailo for motivating him.
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