Achievement goals, competence beliefs, task values have all been identified as parental beliefs important to children’s motivation and behavior in physical activity settings. Achievement goals parents adopt for their children are contrasted as either task- or ego-involved goals. Parents adopt task-involved goals for their children when they define their children’s success in terms of learning and task mastery, while parents adopt ego-involved goals when they define their children’s success as outperforming others. Competence beliefs refer to parents’ beliefs about their children’s ability to perform a physical activity, while task values reflect parents’ beliefs about the importance or usefulness of a physical activity. Many elementary schools have established running programs in physical education to help children stay physically fit. The physical and psychological benefits of regular running are well documented. However, little is known about what factors contribute to children's motivations about those running programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between parents’ beliefs to children’s motivations in an elementary physical education running program, named Roadrunners. Participants were 102 parents (25 fathers; 77 mothers) and their children in the third and fourth grades (49 boys; 53 girls). Parents completed a 20-item questionnaire assessing their achievement goals, competence beliefs and task values. All items were modified from previous research and subjected to factor analyses. Responses to all items were on 5-point Likert scales. Children completed a timed mile run as an assessment of cardiovascular endurance and the number of laps the children ran over the school year for Roadrunners was used as a measure of persistence. Factor analyses yielded three distinct factors: competence/value beliefs (9 items; alpha=.91), task-involved goal (5 items; alpha=.85), and ego-involved goal (5 items; alpha=.92). Multiple regression analyses revealed that parents’ competence/value beliefs were the only significant predictor of children’s persistence in Roadrunners and performance on the mile run. Children whose parents had positive perceptions of their competence in Roadrunners and considered it important and useful for them were more likely to persist in the program and perform better on the mile run. The results provide additional documentation to the important role parental beliefs can play in their children’s motivation and behavior in physical education.