Running!

This year I am running with the Davis high school cross country team. It is the coolest thing I have ever done. The usual response to me telling someone that I run and train daily is " I hate running," or "I could never do that. Nobody in my family runs." Maybe they will even admit "I ran the mile in gym in over eleven minutes." Well all of you who say things like this are very dumb and incredibly stupid.

"I hate running." when people say this what do they mean? They could at least go into some detail, saying that they hate it when they are running and their whole body hurts and all they want to do is stop because they can't breathe and they feel like they are going to see their breakfast any minute. If they said that, I would feel respect for this person, because first this showed that they have actually run before. Second they pushed themselves while running. When someone tells me that they hate running I ask them if they have ever run before. One response (that I usually get from guys) is them telling me how amazingly good they are, "Yeah, last year in gym I ran a 5 minute mile." Or, "In 5th grade on field day I beat everyone in everything." This makes me laugh because it is such a lie. Why do people have to lie about something like this? It is not like they think I believe them. You can always tell if it is a lie because after they tell me this they will say something like, "You don't believe me do you?" "No I really do." "No you don't." "Yes I do." It is really very dumb. My favorite reply to someone hating running is that they are just lazy. I like to say this, because it is true! Everyone could run if they ran and trained every day. If you would just run 30 minutes a day you could easily race in a 5 K.

I think that some people who try running in track or cross country expect it to be easy. It is not easy at all. It takes tons of hard work and determination. I remember one of our workouts in cross country was murder. It was a boiling hot day, I hadn't been drinking a lot of water and I was grumpy. We ran down to this park about 1 1/2 miles from the school. When we got there our coach told us that we were going to be running 400 meter sprints. I wasn't too discouraged until he told us that we would be running 12 of them! We also had a time limit of under 1:50 min. I was lucky I was in the slower group; the higher groups had to run them in 70-80 seconds. While I was running I was thinking to myself, why do I even do this? I am killing myself and for what? It was so hard, but it seemed like the more I ran, the easier it got. After running back to the school we all felt so accomplished. It was a little like getting an A on a Math test that you had studied super hard for. Running not only make you physically fit but it makes you feel good about yourself. It taught me that it is important to keep doing something even though I am not the best one there. It is like anything that you would do in life. If you quit after the first week of pain and suffering, then you'll never know what it felt like to finish a race, or incredibly hard workout. Running is the best!