WHY DISTANCE?

On Monday, I had a very interesting practice. I was the only distance runner there, because three of the girls were at a fresh/soph track meet and two girls couldn't come (we are down to only six distance girls when we had about 20 in xc). My coach gave me a sort of private practice which was very weird. Very, very weird. He did have a point though, when he was analyzing the running form of the people on the track around us. While telling me how my form has improved, he also mentioned how other people could become better. As one boy ran by, my coach told me that he ran like an xc or distance runner although he was a hurdler. Because this kid also plays football (I think) there's no way this would happen, though he'd probably be pretty good. It made me wonder if I chose the right distance or if I would be better being a sprinter while in high school. Then, I couldn't help but thinking about how I chose to be a distance runner. Or how I didn't really choose, but instead how the sport chose me.

In first grade I ran my first mile in about nine and a half minutes (yes, I know all my elementary school mile times). I beat everyone in my combined first/second grade class except three or four boys. It gave me such an exhilarating feeling, I was hooked. I wanted to become faster, to get even better.

I rocked the mile throughout elementary school, continually beating almost everyone. Occasionally some boys would get ahead of me, but they knew I could run just as fast as them. This early talent led me to join YMCA track and field, which is just a bunch of little kids pretending they know how to run. In the short events, such as everything from the 60m to 400m dash, I was just one among the pack. But in the 600m (which I thought was really long), I was good. And so I became a "distance" runner in elementary school.

In middle school, I continued running the longer races, sometimes being the only one from my school. I didn't have the initial burst of speed needed to be a sprinter but I could outkick all my teammates in the last lap of the 1500m. I still don't have that speed, which is evident by our workout yesterday, but I do have that kick.

I wasn't really a "distance" runner though, until I went to high school. Now I feel the urge to just go for a seven mile run, not thinking much of it. My race distances have become a little longer and I'm a lot faster but I still run the distance events. A decision that went back to elementary school. I think I made the right choice.