In most sports, athlete punishment comes in the form of running, whether it’s for a loss that should’ve been a win, misbehavior in class, or simply because Coach is in a bad mood. Needless to say, most players aren’t fans of it. So how is it that a sport like cross country (XC), in which athletes dedicate themselves purely to practicing other sports’ punishment, exists and is fairly popular?
As a dedicated contributor to the Weather Vane with a question in mind and a love for the First Amendment, I joined the EMU cross-country team to gather clues toward solving this mystery.
Having run cross country for a couple of seasons in high school, I was pretty familiar with the gist of it: you just run. But as it turns out, college XC is different from high school: you run more. To give you an outline of just how much running goes down, a typical week for the XC runner might look something like this (if you’re Bellamy Immanuel or Caleb Metzler, double it):
Monday: run seven miles. Tuesday: 1000-meter repeats on the track. Wednesday: recovery day; a calm four-mile jog. Thursday: six miles on the treadmill at heart attack pace. Friday: run eight miles. Saturday: long run.
I asked two of my teammates why they run. The biggest factors for Sophomore Zoe Clymer were the good team atmosphere and “realizing you can do more than you think you can”, pushing yourself, and unlocking the power of the mind. Sam Myers looked at it a little differently: “I run just to feel something.”
From my running journey thus far, I can relate to Zoe’s sentiments. It’s rewarding when hard work pays off. As I’ve discovered for myself, there is something to be said about the feeling of putting your ambition towards a time goal and, after weeks of hard training, surpassing that goal after leaving it all on the race course. It feels good to have something to work towards, and breaking barriers and discovering that you can run faster than you thought possible is beautiful to experience.
Zoe is also right about the camaraderie found among the runners. Running isn’t all that bad when you’re doing it together. I’ve made some good memories with the team on long Saturday jaunts through the countryside or riding home on the bus after a big race.
So there are some reasons why cross country runners do it: the reward of pushing past goals, finding out you’re capable of more than you thought, and the great times to be had with companions.
But maybe some of us relate more to Sophomore Alex Belisle: “I run because I’m better at it than soccer.”