By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
A small crowd came to hear Marc Bloom promote his new running book at Barnes and Noble in MarketFair on Thursday.
Bloom had already appeared in Freehold, which holds a race series that is featured in his “Young Runners: The Complete Guide to Healthy Running for Kids from 5 to 18,” but this crowd was a little different.
”In Freehold, we didn’t have a bunch of national champions sitting there like we did with the Rosas and Ashley Higginson,” Bloom said. “That was nice to see them here. They’re really sweet kids.”
Bloom had covered Higginson, now a Princeton University sophomore, while she was a standout at Colts Neck High. Last fall, Bloom’s magazine “The Harrier” featured West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s cross country team, which was represented Thursday night by Jim and Joe Rosa and Jon Squeri to hear about Bloom’s latest book.
”I don’t think they need it,” Bloom joked. “They could probably teach me a few things. It’s nice to get that support.”
Among those in attendance were the parents of West Windsor-Plainsboro South distance stars Katie and Caroline Kellner, former Hun and The College of New Jersey distance standout Erin Cahill and the parents of WW-P North graduate Sean McNulty.
Bloom spoke for a half-hour about the book, which takes a comprehensive look at running for school-aged children with everything from how and when to get started, to diet, to injury prevention. He used antidotes from the book intertwined with his own experiences as the father of two girls. He offered advice to the crowd,
”You don’t have to rush it,” in response to a question on what was most important to developing a young runner, before autographing copies of his book.
Bloom addressed early why he wrote “Young Runners.” With childhood obesity is growing at an alarming rate, the country has scrambled to provide more fitness opportunities like running. The opportunities compared to 20 years ago are limitless.
”One of the reasons for writing the book was I was seeing a response from the running community in the form of so many kids programs and events,” Bloom said, adding, “We’re in the midst of a kids running boom.”
Bloom found evidence of it everywhere he traveled to do research for the book. His book examines the Freehold race series, a physical education program in Virginia, a youth running program in Durham, N.C., and a Brooklyn middle school team that goes to school in a converted apartment and has to practice in a local park.
”In putting together the chapter on middle school, which I’m really proud of because I feel like I integrated a lot of different ideas, what I saw when I went out there was very encouraging,” Bloom said. “I did get a bit of a surprise, a pleasant surprise, with the middle school programs.”
Chapters address running at a wide range of ages as well as the different approaches successful programs are taking. He includes expert opinions to back his own research. Wherever Bloom went, he found varied backgrounds among young runners, and he found plenty of interest in kids running and his book.
”People were asking a lot of questions,” Bloom said. “It wasn’t only that I was asking questions. Questions would come and that helped me ascertain what the most important issues were.”
There is a chapter on autistic children, something that Bloom is hoping to expand on for a future book. At the end of the book is a capsule look at how running can help in cross-training for other sports as well as a list of some of the larger children’s events nationwide. For his first book on children’s running, Bloom chose to include all ages.
”If I used that large range, I thought it would be very comprehensive,” he said. “That’s how I work. I try to include everything I can. In addition, school age is a natural beginning for running.
”It also helped me define the structure of the book and the different chapters. It’s not totally by age, some are by other themes. It helped me design how I wanted the book to come out. I’m very happy about it.”
”Young Runners” is available at local bookstores and on-line. Its release coincides with a surge in young runners and the opportunities available to them. The book is a resource to help enrich the experience.
Said Bloom: “To see how much there is around the country in the way of running programs, most of them only in the last few years — this is really a new development. . . A lot is being done at the grassroots level by people involved, whether they’re teachers, parents, coaches, or event organizers, corporate sponsorship, medical people and all strata in the healthy and fitness running community.
”There’s a lot of great stuff out there,” he added. “It’s wonderful. You want to keep it going.”

