Raise Your Game: Tell me about the work of the New York Road Runners Foundation?

Cliff Sperber: The Foundation carries out the community service initiative of NY Roadrunners. NY Roadrunners are the originators and the ongoing producers of the ING NY City Marathon, one of the world's greatest marathons, as well as the foremost road-running association in the world.

We create programmes for NYC youth and extend those programmes outside NYC so that kids get the opportunity to use running to improve their health, their emotional wellbeing and their personal achievements, their ability to succeed in school and work and all aspects of life.

RYG: How do you start when kids come to you? What do you tell them they can do within the Foundation?

CS: We like to say we have running-based fitness and character-building programmes. They're going to help them feel better physically, feel better mentally and look better. We're going to help them develop a mind-set and methodology to get them in shape now and stay in shape throughout their lives.

Frankly, because there are limited physical education facilities in the NYC public schools, it's really just as simple as telling the kids 'You're going to have the opportunity to run', because there's very little physical activity during the day in the schools. Most schools have little to none, so when kids get the opportunity here to be able to run and get some incentives for their running, they really delight in that opportunity!

RYG: You've got some fantastic incentives here - tell me about these badges?

CS: Well, I think a very important part of the programme is that we encourage kids to set goals and help them to achieve those goals. One of the goals that the kids can have is that they determine a level of distance that they will run, and we have patches to signify distances from 1 mile to 5 miles to show they've achieved their goals.

We've had hundreds and hundreds of kids wearing the patches. Most of them, when we did the first initial test, sprinted out, not pacing because they didn't know about running distances. They sprinted a couple of hundred yards - if that - and they were out of breath and gasping. From that the idea of actually being able to run a mile, let alone a number of miles, is amazing.

If they stick with the programme, they learn about pacing, about setting goals and, in a short amount of time, they can get their 1 mile patch and extend beyond that. It's wonderful, it's how the kids begin to feel better about themselves, because they see themselves accomplishing things they previously hadn't been able to accomplish and that's how you build self-esteem and self-confidence.

I think it's important for kids to feel they're being successful, so we work with them to achieve small, bite-size goals. Perhaps the first goal is being able to run around the schoolyard without stopping, or to run around the block without stopping, building up to running a mile, and setting more goals along the way.

We're certainly not telling the kids they're going to run the marathon next year, but I think a lot of our kids will eventually run the marathon or have the capacity to run the marathon because of the step-by-step approach that they're taking with us.

RYG: So what you're doing is giving them hope, a can-do feeling?

CS: It's absolutely a can-do feeling. The essence of our work is providing teachers in public schools with training, technical assistance and on-going support which includes money to fund the programme. A very important aspect of our training is being positive with the kids, being realistic in terms of setting goals and expectations, but being positive and always trying to reward and support the achievement of the kids.

RYG: How do you deal with the problem of childhood obesity?

CS: It's a huge problem. If you're conversant with the US media, hardly a week goes by when there's not another study decrying the fact that children in America are heavier than they have ever been in our country's history. Given that people tend to get heavier as they get older, starting out with that level of overweight and obesity is virtually dooming an entire generation of kids to a shorter life expectancy and a lower quality of life.

A large component of our programme is giving kids a mind-set and a methodology through running and walking. We're giving them the technique that can help them to get in shape now, and stay in shape throughout their lives. Nutrition workshops are an important component of our programme called 'Urban fuel - Food for energy and living'.

We have people who go into our schools and talk to the kids who are in our programmes, and they do a fuel check which the kids really enjoy, checking off the foods they eat and considering the types of foods they're not eating, and whether or not they consider if those foods would really help them not only be better runners for this programme, but healthier all around in life.