By Jimmy Wang
What is the most significant predictor of success in life? Is it natural talent, available resources, or a healthy environment? Hold this thought, as we explore the sport of cross country and its history at our school.
The History of Cross Country
Cross country is the sport of running medium to long distances over natural terrain. Races are held on grass or dirt trails, with distances ranging from 3km for middle school students to 10km for adults. The sport has a long history. An early form of cross-country running existed in English schools in the 19th century, where a team of “hares” would leave trails of paper for “hounds” to follow. In 1837, schools in England started to organize official races, and the sport soon spread across the Atlantic to the US. International competitions were also held by French and English schools against each other. The 1912 Olympics featured a cross-country race, cementing its status as an established sport.
Pictured here is the individual cross-country race at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Because of the high temperatures (over 40°C!), less than half of the 38 runners finished the race. Torturous. Yet there exist many reasons that this sport is for everyone.
Establishment at CIS
CIS didn’t always have a cross-country program. Organizing any race at all requires a minimum number of runners and amount of available space, making it a tricky element in ACSIS’s 3 season rotation.
An impetus was required to launch the program at our school. Enter Mr. Andrew Clarke. He started running consistently in 2010, after discovering the insane people who run ultramarathons.
They ran outside my condo at the time. Just watching them pass, how does someone run 100 km? I thought I’ll try. I’ll just run a kilometer one day, run a bit longer the next day, and eventually, I’ll be able to run 100 kilometers.
Not very realistic but certainly a good mindset. Since then, Mr. Clarke has learned about the ways to train scientifically, and how to do so for competitive events. He applied this experience in his role as a cross country coach, starting in 2014.
But being the one to initiate the program had its challenges. There was no advice on how to plan a balanced routine with which athletes can train. Moreover, at its peak, the high school program consisted of around 50-60 students. In such a large group, there’s a wide range of fitness levels, so athletes have to be divided into different groups to train. This complicates the organization of the program. Despite these obstacles, runners can very much expect a structured, scientific training program.
Cross Country: Season 1
We start off with base training because we assume that people come in without having done a lot of running beforehand. After that, there’s always interval training to some extent… It’s good to get a time trial in at some point so that you can work out what time to do the intervals in.
A race is also analyzed in components, which are then trained individually, such as at the start of the race or a hill section.
Not all cross country is physical prowess. Within a point in time, your body’s ability is more or less fixed. On race day, you can’t will your cells to use oxygen more rapidly, nor force your burning muscles to shuttle lactic acid more quickly. But you control your mind. It doesn’t make you faster but it lets you stay fast for longer, by working through the pain. How can one train this?
You work out a pace that is not just jogging but is not so hard that it’s going to break you. It’s that little area in between that’s challenging yet doable. … And if you can do that, you go away, come back, and do it again.
This zone that Mr. Clarke refers to is called the threshold pace. It’s the fastest you can run before lactic acid builds up, causing your muscles to burn and eventually forcing you to stop. Here, your mind is put through the equivalent of weight training, because you’ve reached the last stop on the way to ‘actually not doable’. You play all sorts of tricks on yourself, thinking that you have to slow down, or you’ll collapse, or injure your lungs. But seeing through those tricks stretches the mind and strengthens it to its limits.
The Zone
We all do our best work when we’re in the zone. When the outside world disappears and there is but one single, essential task at hand. And the colloquial expression “the zone” corresponds well to the above description, of where your mind is best trained: The flow state where you can focus on nothing but your present exertion.
To deliberately launch oneself into “the zone” over and over again allows it to be exploited on demand, and this mastery of self is what leads to success.
In many team sports, you want to be the best. Running still has a team aspect, but it’s more about inside yourself. Getting the best out of yourself. Knowing that it’s going to hurt but you’re going to do it anyway. It builds these character traits which make a good person.
Don’t train to run. Run to train, for life.
To students who would like to train as a part of the team, feel free to meet up on Mondays and Thursdays at the atrium at 3:40 PM, or Fridays 6:50 AM on the upper field.