Special Olympics

Every year the St. Francis track and field team volunteers their time to officiate the track portion of the Special Olympics. This year, the Special Olympics happened to fall on a freezing cold, rainy Sunday at the end of April. As I got ready to go help out, my enthusiasm was lacking. We had gotten home late the night before from a track meet, and the weather looked less than pleasant outside. However, I am very pleased that I went. It was an experience I will not soon forget. As I wrote about in my previous blog, running has become quite tiresome and tedious lately. Helping with the Special Olympics helped to give me a new perspective on my sport.
The competitors at the Special Olympics had every reason for giving up, but not a single one conceded to defeat. None of them would ever be great athletes, but it was obvious that they found great joy in competing. While my teammates and I were complaining about not wanting to race yesterday in the pouring down rain, the competitors at the Special Olympics today did not let the bitter cold and chilling winds put a damper on their day.
Some of them were significantly slow than the others. While some people were finishing their race, some were still half a lap behind them. Whenever a few teammates and I cheered for one man who was slowly walking along with a look of determination in his eyes, he smiled at us and simply said, "I go on my own time." He was clearly not going to win. In fact, he was about to come in last by at least thirty seconds. However, it was clear that he was enjoying the moment and was not about to back down.
It was inspiring to see the competitor's support for each other. I watched two young boys race each other down the straightaway in a 100m dash, and lovingly embrace each other and throw their hands in the air with happiness at the end. At the end of the race, many of the runners would give each other high fives and compliments on their performances, even when the other person easily prevailed over them.
Smiles never left their faces, even as they became weary and tired. Many would finish the race, and immediately give me a handshake and a hug. After the race one man, who came in last in his heat, asked me what his finishing time was. As I told him he had just walked 100m in over 1 minute, he just looked at me with the biggest smile on his face and said, "Hey, that's pretty good."
At this time in my life, this experience was exactly what I needed. I realized that running and competing can be fun. I learned just how big of an impact a simple high five or "good job" can have on someone who may be struggling. It was clear that the competitors in the Special Olympics did not have the ideal life, but by observing them and speaking to them, it was clear that they loved their lives, nevertheless. The participants today will never be able to run as fast as I can, but they were enjoying it more than I ever have. Running brings me great joy in life, but there are more important things, such as making an impact on the lives of others.

For  more information on the Special Olympics and to learn how to get involved, click on the following link: http://www.specialolympics.org/

When the going gets tough...

I guess you could say one could say that I have a love/hate relationship with running. Sometimes I feel like I just want to give up, but even one day without running leaves me feeling antsy. In the past few weeks in particular, my relationship with running has been full of more hate than love. 
My transition to college running was far from trouble-free, as I have discussed in earlier blog posts. Over the past year, I have put in more miles and ran more intense workouts than I ever did throughout high school. I thought this increase in training would bring me instant boosts in performance, but this has been far from the case. I cannot say I was displeased with every single race I ran all year, but overall I had more bad performances than decent ones. I no longer feel like myself when I race. While I usually feel confident, albeit nervous, and ready to face whatever obstacles come my way, I now feel like I am just going through the motions when I race. Whenever I try to speed up, I feel as if my legs are weighed down with bricks, unable to move. Everything seems to move in slow motion. With my declining race performances, I have become my own worst enemy. 
I have always been a perfectionist. My best is never good enough for me, and I put my whole heart into everything I do. Being a perfectionist has helped me greatly throughout my life, as I have accomplished more than I have ever dreamed of. However, it has also led to a lack of confidence, too much negativity, and occasional unhappiness. Running is a sport that seems to attract perfectionists, such as myself. It is appealing to people like me because in running, your performance is affected completely by your own actions. You do not have to rely on anyone else, and you can always improve by putting in hard work. On the other hand, running is also capable of driving a perfectionist crazy. Throughout this year I have pushed myself harder than ever before in training, in hopes of slashing huge amounts of time off of my races. Whenever I was tired and felt as if I was in need of a break, I would push through it by telling myself, "This will all pay off in the end."  I always felt as if I had to persevere through. My coach would encourage me to push my limits each and every day, without allowing my body time to recover. When I told him that I was feeling worn down, he would tell me that it was all mental and I was fine. Looking back now, I wish I would have listened to what my body was telling me. With only two weeks left in the season and my championship meet still to come, I am feeling more depleted than ever before. I haven't been racing to my ability level for a while now, and I always responded by doing more training, when what my body really needed was a break. If I would have been proactive earlier on, I could have salvaged what was left of my season. I am going to do whatever it takes to do well at my last couple of meets, even if it requires me to take a few days off of running completely. 
As I reflected about my race on the bus ride home yesterday, I thought about what I could do to save the rest of my season. I realized that I needed to physically take care of my body, but that since my physical exhaustion had also taken a toll emotionally, I would also have to make some mental adjustments. Over the next few weeks, I want to rediscover all of the reasons why I love to run. A few posts ago, I wrote about the simple joys I have found in running, and it seems that lately these joys have gone by the wayside, and have been replaced by an overwhelming desire to push myself to the limit. If I want to run fast, I will, once again, have to enjoy the simple pleasure of having the God-given ability to run. God has blessed me with a talent, and I do not intend to let it go to waste. 

This past Tuesday, I received news that would dramatically alter the next four years of my college running career. At four o'clock, the time we always begin practice, we were called into a conference room with all of our coaches and the athletic directors. As we sat around a large table as a team, we were told that our head coach was asked to immediately resign from his position. This came as a shock to all of us. I was not too fond of him, and I knew the he was on thin ice with the administration as well. However, I thought that if they did decide to let him go it would not be until the end of the season. Suddenly, the distance runners on the team were stuck without a coach, three weeks before our conference championship meet.

Whenever you tell an outsider that your coach was fired in middle of the season, they are almost always expecting some big scandal to surface. In this case, there was no scandal. I will spare you all of the details, but our coach was simply not performing his duties. Trips to meets were unorganized, no recruiting was done, training was ineffective, and athletes were repeatedly disrespected. I agreed with the administration's decision to let him go. His resignation will be better for the team in the long run. But, in the present, the distance runners have definitely been placed in a less than ideal situation.

The role of a coach for any team is vital. Without a team, the group lacks structure. Even a subpar coach offers a sense of unity and authority to a team. When our head coach was here, we may not have agreed on everything he had us do, but at least we knew what we were to do.

As I sat down with my teammates at dinner on the evening of our coach's resignation, we discussed the challenges that lay ahead of us. The throws coach was to take over as acting head coach, and the sprinting and jumping coaches would be helping us to create our workouts. We all agreed that although we were stressed, the coaches were most definitely put in an even more taxing situation than we were. We knew that our assistant coaches were great people who genuinely cared about our success. Some of the workouts they were going to run us through were going to be quite different from what we were used to. They may have different techniques to coaching, and they may require different things from us. However, we had to respect them. This would be very important to our success as a team.

We also decided that we would have to support each other, now more than ever before. Some people were definitely going to struggle with the adjustment, as change is always difficult. The seniors on the team would have to act as role models for the younger runners, such as myself.

People were going to doubt us; especially the other teams in our conference come championships. We all agreed that this year we had something to prove. It was not the time to give up. We had to keep training hard, and keep believing that all the work we had put in over the last year was worth it.

This situation has been a bump in the road that I have had to overcome. In the end, I think it will make me a stronger person and a better teammate. It has forced me to believe in myself and my teammates. I am truly looking forward to our conference championships in two weeks. I know that every single athlete on our team will strive to do their absolute best, as we all want to show the other teams that we are great athletes, even without a head coach. I know that this conference championship will be a meet that I will never forget. Other teams may doubt us, but we are not letting that bring us down as a team. We just say, "Bring it on."

African Dominance of Running

This past Monday, one of the most prestigious races in all of running, the Boston marathon, took place. Each year, thousands of runners toe the starting line to run 26.2 miles through Boston. Not just anyone can sign up for this marathon, as runners must hit a qualifying standard to enter. The Boston marathon attracts many of the world's top marathoners. It was no surprise to me that Kenyan runners once again won both the men's and women's races 

(http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/results-commentary/2012-mens-story.aspx).
This is not unusual. In fact, East African runners currently hold 37 of the top 50 marathon times ever ran (Coghlan, Endurance Running, p. 3). 
 A couple of months ago, I wrote a paper for science class discussing this East African dominance of distance running. I read various research on the issue. Results of research were inconclusive, as some research showed genetic differences that contribute to their dominance, and other research shows that cultural differences are the biggest factor in their great performances. In this blog entry, I would like to discuss a recent issue in both college running, and high school running, involving this issue. 

   Edward Cheserek, a high school junior from New Jersey, dominated the high school running scene this past fall, easily winning the national championship (http://nj.milesplit.com/athletes/1746332-edward-cheserek). He rewrote record books at every course he ran on throughout the year. Only a junior, he is on course to become the best prep runner in all of U.S. history. Except, he is not an American. Cheserek was born and raised in Kenya, and attends a preparatory school here in New Jersey ( http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=ken/athcode=263865/index.html).  Many people have questioned his age. Cheserek certainly looks a lot older than most other high school runners he competes against. Birthdays are not always accurately recorded in poorer countries such as Kenya, so even Cheserek himself may not know his actual birthday. This raises a debate: should a non-citizen who may be in their twenties be allowed to dominate high school running here in America?

Some people think that Cheserek has an unfair advantage if he is over the high school age. I would agree. However, if Cheserek is in fact older than high school age, he himself is most likely not even aware of it. Should he be punished for being a student from a poor area who was able to travel to America, succeed, and make a name for himself?

Issues such as this have also occurred in college running as of recent. This past fall, Lawi Lalang, a native African, won the NCAA cross country championships by a large margin (http://www.arizonawildcats.com/sports/m-track/mtt/lalang_lawi00.html). This is nothing new; Sammy Chelenga, another African, won it the year before. However, Lawi Lalang is dominating college running as only a freshman. East African dominance in women's high school and college running has not been quite as prevalent, but there are many East African women who have found success in U.S. colleges, as well.

There are certainly drawbacks to East Africans dominating running here in the United States. If in fact they are proven to have a genetic advantage when it comes to distance running, then it may not be fair for college coaches here in the United States to recruit only East African runners. This takes away scholarship opportunities for hardworking American runners who would love the chance to run on a college team. Some critics have suggested limiting foreign athletes on college teams.

However, if you look at the big picture, East African dominance here in America could be a good thing. We live in a world that is becoming more and more globalized by the day. No longer are graduates competing against only local people in job searches; they are competing against people from all over the world. Why should this be any different when it comes to sports? In business, competition leads to better products and more innovations. More competition in sports leads to better performances. This is why records in track and field have continued to improve over the years. Having to compete against successful runners from all over the world will only serve to strengthen native born American runners. In recent years, American runners have been overshadowed on the national scene by East Africans. Perhaps intense competition against foreign athletes starting in high school and college athletics will help Americans to once again gain a prominent standing on the world scene.

 To a non-runner, cross country and track and field are the same sport. To a runner, however, they are night and day. I cannot blame people for not understanding the differences between the two. Most people on campus only see us running around campus or out on the roads, no matter if the leaves are falling, snow is covering the ground, or the flowers are beginning to bloom. Even  my own family often gets the two mixed up. By now I am used to my grandma or my mother asking me during cross country season, “When is your next track meet?” I used to correct them, but it is not worth starting a fight over. The goal of this blog entry is to simply educate readers on the differences between the two.

            First, I will start with the basics. Cross country is a sport that takes place in the fall, roughly from the end of August until mid-November. Race distances differ. In junior high school, the majority of my races were about a mile and a half long. In high school, races for both men and women were 5k in length, or 3.1 miles. College level race distances differ by gender. Men generally run 8k, or around 5 miles. For regional championships, men bump up to the 10k, or 6.2 miles. Females run 5ks for many races, but championship races are often 6k, or around 3.75 miles. Cross country races can vary greatly, depending on the course’s terrain. Some cross country courses I have been on have been as flat as a track. In others, I have had to run up treacherous hills. Some courses take place completely on grass. Others feature rocky terrain, mud, or even some concrete paths. I have even had to run across creeks and streams in cross country races. Some races feature hay barrels that must be jumped over.

            Track and Field takes place from the end of Cross Country season until May. During the winter, track and field competitions take place on indoor tracks. Indoor tracks are 200m in length, or approximately 1/8^th of a mile. Come outdoor season, tracks are twice the length, 400m. Track and field features a great variety of different events, not just track events. The jumping events are long jump, triple jump, high jump, and pole vault. The field events include javelin, shot put, discus, weight throw, and hammer. Track events include races from the 100m dash, all the way up to the 10k, including team relays.

            Scoring differs between cross country and track. In cross country, a team wants to have the lowest score possible, kind of like golf. The first five finishers on a team count for scoring. The next two runners on the team play an important role as well, as they can finish in front of another team’s top five runners, affecting the scoring. For example, if a runner places first overall, the team receives one point. If a runner places 28^th overall, a team receives 28 points. In track, a team must receive the highest score to win. At most large invitational meets, the first eight finishers in each event score. The first place finisher will receive eight points; the second place finisher will receive seven points, and so on.  

            Cross country races often include huge numbers of competitors. I have competed in races with as many as four hundred other runners. Therefore, even placing in the top one hundred is a great achievement. Sometimes it is embarrassing to tell people that I placed 45^th in a race, because they do not understand that 45 out of 300 or 400 is actually a good performance. In a college race against juniors and seniors, I would be ecstatic to place in the top 15% or so.

            While cross country runners all run in one race, track races are separated into heats. At large meets, there can be as many as ten heats of the same event. Heat sheets are issued, with runners listed from fastest to slowest, so people run in heats against competitors of similar ability.

            I have found cross country to be a much more team-oriented sport. Cross country teams are made up of only the distance runners, so the team is a lot tighter knit. Cross country teams spend a lot of time together, so they often become very close. I have made good friends from other events in track, as well, but I do not spend nearly as much time as them. Also, cross country runners have the same interests, as they are all running the same type of race. I have definitely noticed differences between the personalities of distance runners and throwers, for example. Distance runners spend most of their time out on the roads, logging mile after mile. Throwers on the other hand, spend much of their time in the gym, working on their strength, or on the field, perfecting their throwing technique.

            Most distance runners either prefer cross country or track. For me personally, I enjoy aspects of both. I enjoy the team aspect of cross country, but I am better suited to track running. I am better at middle-distance races, such as the 1500m or 3,000m, which require more speed than endurance. Cross country is definitely more of an endurance sport. I easily beat some competitors during track season who ran faster than me in cross country, and vice versa. During a cross country race, you have more time to make up ground. If you go out too slow in an 800m race, you do not have much time to catch back up. In a cross country race, a runner can start out towards the back and slowly make their way to the front of the pack.

            Even though there are many differences between cross country and track and field, the two sports build on each other. The endurance I gain from training over the summer for cross country season carries over to my track performances come winter. The speed I gain in track helps me to outkick other runners at the end of cross country races. Running can be a very repetitive activity, and I welcome the differences between cross country and track. Each sport has much to offer, and I cannot see myself being solely a track runner or a cross country runner. So, next time you are talking to a runner about their competitions, keep in mind the differences between cross country and track. You may just impress them with your knowledge!