Reinhardt Harrison, 10, Breaks Half Marathon World Record
Reinhardt Harrison, a 10-year-old from Falls Church, Virginia, stunned fellow runners and the world when he managed to break the world record for a half-marathon for his age group. The young runner managed to finish the 13.1-mile distance in just one hour, 35 minutes and 22 seconds at the Alexandria Running Festival last week.
Reinhardt Harrison's accomplishment of finishing a half-marathon so quickly is amazing even for adults— he finished 55th out of 900 other runners, running around a mile every seven minutes. Harrison shattered the 1:37:15 record of Noah Bliss from Kenosha, Wisconsin, who only received his world record title from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians last month.
The 10-year-old's father, Dennis Harrison, is a volunteer youth running coach who teaches proper running form, stretching and only lets his son run about 10 miles a week. Still Reinhardt, a passionate runner, has been begging his parents to let him run the half-marathon for a long time.
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"I said, 'No, no, you're not ready,' and he said, 'Well, when can I?'" Harrison told ABC News. "Running is his passion."
Eventually Harrison relented and told Reinhardt he could run the half-marathon when he was 10 years old. That day came sooner than the 54-year-old dad realized.
"He's actually beating me now," Harrison said. "I keep telling him I still got a few more years. I might be able to get faster. Age is not on my side."
The young boy has a lot of potential, as his father told him to treat the half-marathon like a training run— 1:35:22 may not even be his fastest time.
Reinhardt, who has been running since he was just three years old, has participated in races from 400 meters all the way up to a 5K, and says he prefers cross-country running to sprinting because short races are "over quickly," he previously told The Washington Post.
In 2012, he won back-to-back championships in cross-country, taking five national titles and setting three national event records. His aspirations are high— he won't stop "until I get to the Olympics," he said.
