Running Classification

The sport of running is one of the best kinds of sports because throughout the school year there is a running sport for each sports season. That means if you want to run all year long on a competitive school team than you can, unlike any other sport offered at school, running is the only sport which has a team for all seasons.

The first of the running sports takes place in the fall and it is called cross country. Cross country is a sport where teams of runners compete to complete a course over terrain that includes hills, mud, grass, trails, and an overall rough terrain. Cross country is not really a sport that is run to beat a time, rather it is about who comes over the finish line first because each cross-country running course is different in structure. The distance of the courses are not always the same but distance is probably the thing most in common between courses. Certain courses are hilly, others are flat but the distance is in general around 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles long. Since the courses are not alike it is hard to compare times that you get on one course to the time you run on another course, they will be completely different. The races for cross country start as a large group on a long starting line which may be on a field. Each team has its own box along the start line where the runners line up from the number one runner to last runner. A gun shot is sounded for the race to begin, at this point once the runners are off the starting line they run the course.

The next running sport, which takes place during the winter, is indoor track. This is one of the two seasons of track. Indoor track meets take place on tracks which are usually 200 meters in length and are inside a field house. The running events for indoor track are the 55 meter, the 55 meter hurdles, the 300 meter, 600 meter, 1000 meter, 1600 meter, 3200 meter and the 4 by 200 and 4 by 800 meter relays. The wide range of running distances are very accommodating to runners that are good at sprinting rather than long distance running like cross country races. There are also various field events such as the pole vault, high jump, long jump, shot put throw, and triple jump. Indoor track meets usually last a long time because there are only three indoor tracks that are available for meets in Connecticut. This means that every meet there are hundreds of people who compete and this takes up the entire day. Also the air condition of the field house where the track is are bad, the air is very dry and will give you a sore throat after you run. It is also unpredictable whether it will be warm or chilly inside the building. Practices

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