Update: On Sunday, Belle Snyder, 9, and Gabriel Snyder, 12, finished the Athens Marathon in 5:43:13. Elizabeth Snyder, 11, finished in 5:53:15, with her dad, Steve, in 5:54:22.
Four out of five members of the Snyder family—Steven, age 39, Gabriel, age 12, Elizabeth, age 11, and Belle, age 9—will run their first marathon together at the Athens Ohio Marathon on Sunday. The children’s mother, Christie, will cheer them on and meet them at the finish line.
While many marathons have minimum age requirements in place—Steven Snyder says that representatives from the Pittsburgh Marathon and Disney Marathon have told him his children aren’t old enough to run their races—the Snyder family of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, was able to register for the race in Athens, Ohio.
Race Director Lisa Simons told Runner’s World Newswire by email that the race does have a minimum age requirement, but a glitch in their system must have allowed the children of the Snyder family to register.
“This late in the game, we will allow them to participate, but will make sure that our age limit is set in our system for next year,” Simons said.
Snyder says he’s cleared his kids’ running with the family’s doctors, and he’s done his own research.
“There’s not enough quantitative evidence out there to show that there would be any kind of risk to kids. I would never, never jeopardize my kids’ health. Never,” Snyder told Newswire.
Snyder says that safety always comes first when the family members run or ride their bikes together. That’s one of the reasons that any time they run a race together, they don’t cross the starting line until as much as five minutes after the gun goes off. He does so not only to keep his children from being trampled in a crowded start, but also because of the psychological boost catching up to people and passing them provides.
Snyder also notes that he and his children have built their training in a gradual manner. “We didn’t just start one day and do a 20-mile run. We very slowly have worked up to this mark,” he says.
Snyder ran cross country in high school, but says he wasn’t very good and he didn’t really like it. “I really haven’t had any interest whatsoever in running, outside of the kids,” he told Runner’s World Newswire.
But when his oldest child, Gabriel, got involved in the Pittsburgh Marathon’s Kids of Steel program, which encourages kids to run 26.2 miles over the course of four months, Gabriel, then 6, quickly got hooked. It forced his father back into the sport as well, so he could accompany his son during training runs and races. One race and training run at a time, the pair built up their distance, until Gabriel ran his first half marathon at age 9, accompanied by his father.
Elizabeth and Belle followed their older brother into the sport, and have also enjoyed the Kids of Steel program, but they have hit certain milestones sooner than their brother. Now 9, Belle has already run six half marathons and a 30K.
Snyder doesn’t remember whose idea the marathon was, but he says his children are always collectively looking to push their limits. “Each one of the kids is always looking to take it a step further with everything we do,” he says, noting that they’ve already raised the idea of doing ultramarathons as well.
He estimates that his children run between 3 and 7 miles, 2 to 3 times per week, with a longer weekend run, between 12 and 22 miles, every second or third week.
Snyder and his kids have also gone on some epic bike trips over the past several years. While the youngest, Belle, rode on her father’s back during the first trip, she’s kept up with the rest of the family since then. For their first trip in 2011, they rode from their home near Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., covering 366 miles in nine days. In 2013, they circumnavigated Lake Ontario, covering 650 miles in 15 days.
Snyder says that they make vacations out of their cycling trips and road race adventures. This weekend, for example, they’ll make a trip to the zoo the day before the race.
The children attract attention when they’re cycling with large packs and running long road races, and they enjoy it. “The kids really get excited when, to be honest, they get treated like rock stars when they’re out places,” Snyder says.
He points out that it’s also a nice way to spend time with his kids and learn more about them. He’s heard about first crushes, what’s going on with the kids’ friends, and so on while out running and riding with his kids. “It’s this perfect time, [our] minds [are] clear and we just talk. It’s fun,” he says.
The family mostly runs together at a casual pace during training runs and races, but in certain settings, when it’s safe, one or two will go ahead and run on their own. This weekend the family will be joined in the race by Marie Bartoletti, who has run 300 marathons and done ultras and is a great inspiration to the Snyder children. This will allow them to split up during the marathon, if need be.
“We’ll run together for a while, but if we see that somebody wants to take off a little bit, then one of us will run with that person and the other one will stay with the other two,” Snyder says.
