Dangerous

Unknown to most, cross country and track is a very physical sport. Although contact during a race is prohibited it happens in every race. Most cross country races have far to many people in them for officials to keep an eye on all runners. Most are small gestures like running a little close to someone and maybe pushing the other person with an elbow. There are however many more way that a runner can be seriously hurt. At the beginning of any race there is a struggle for position, and that includes a lot of pushing and shoving. While running it is difficult to keep your balance while being completely surrounded by other runners, and people do fall. When someone falls it can be dangerous. Most runners run with spikes on the bottom of the shoe that are very sharp, and if someone was stepped on multiple times it wouldn't feel good.
A few years ago I saw a guy in front of me that got boxed in and ran into a tree. There wasn't a lot he could do because there was a person that was blocking his view of the tree and moved at the last second, he didn't finish the race. I found out that if you run close enough to someone and a bit behind them, you can clip their back leg as it comes up making the person face-plant. This was used in the following video, but in a steeplechase race at the world games a few years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_s6ahuPCwQ

Injuries

Having an injury is one of the hardest things a runner can run into. When a competitive runner gets even a minor injury it usually means they will not run for at least a week. Other injuries are commonly due to running on pavement which can lead to a very common injury, shin splints. A more severe case of shin splints are stress fractures. These happen when bones get a huge amount of stress and crack, causing huge amounts of pain. The healing time is similar to a broken bone that can take many months to fully recover. There are a number of different injuries that can be very severe. Some of these can include things like tendon issues, ligament issues, join and knee, and muscle strains and pulls. Every professional has had at least one of these issues in their careers.

Newspaper Article

Last year the sports editor at Northwest made an article after going to a high school cross country meet. This was meant to be a satire but as most people would guess, he failed miserably. He insulted cross country and running in general, he insulted all runners, those parents and most of all those high school runners at the meet. There was little attempt to apologize to anyone he may have offended. The editor of the paper made an appearance at one of the Northwest's cross country practices. One of his opening statements said cross country is not a sport. Running is the great past time that is the base of all sports. As most people would guess this article got a lot of attention from all kinds of people. And now the article from the Northwest's newspaper published Sept. 10th 2009

I attended a high school cross country meet the other day and it made me a little upset.

I sat through four hours of running because of course, I misread the schedule. I showed up for the JV girls and then I was lucky enough to catch the JV boys who followed. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity later, the crème of the crop, the varsity, took their turn.

With all the free time I had waiting for these runners to cross the finish line I began to question if cross country is a real sport. I witnessed many things that have all signs pointing to NO.

First of all, I am in no way saying cross country is easy because running as far as they do every day is in no way easy. But my first problem comes when I waited at least 20-some minutes for the race to be over. The final runner crosses the line and you just begin to think thank God that is over, but wait a minute, there is one more runner out there and everyone has to wait another five minutes for him to finish.

For those of you out there who were those runners everyone had to wait on, I first want to say I think it’s really admirable you run cross country and make the commitment.  My question to you though is, why waste everyone’s time?

The worst part of our last place friends is all the deranged cross country fans who actually give more applause for the runner who comes in last than for the race’s winner. As a competitor that would make me feel horrible and embarrassed knowing everyone is standing up applauding as I finish at least five minutes behind everyone else.

Then all four races were finally over and everyone gathered for the “awards ceremony.” One girl stood up and announced it was someone’s birthday on her team. All of the seven teams stood up to sing happy birthday. Someone actually came up to me and said how awesome cross country was because everyone is friendly with each other. They asked me if they thought anyone would sing happy birthday to their opponent on the football field. My immediate thought was hopefully not because this is making me sick. Football players are lined up from each other saying the worst things imaginable because they don’t care about their opponent; they just want to win. This is why football is a sport.

Finally, I don’t know where they get off calling it an awards ceremony in the first place. I sat and watched as they handed out nice shiny medals to the top 20 finishers. Are you serious? People are actually called in front of everyone and recognized for being slower than 19 other people.

For those of you cross country runners who go into every meet wanting and actually having a chance to win; keep doing what you are doing. Do me one favor though, drop your loser friends. You will have more free time then you will know what to do with.