Monthly Archives: November 2015

For this assignment, we were instructed to write to an audience unfamiliar with whatever topic we were writing about. This put tremendous pressure on picking a genre that I was well versed in so I decided on some sort of music given my interest and familiarity with the genres and decided on doing blues rock as it presented a music type I was both familiar with and consistent enough to allow me to explain it concisely; this combination was very much opposed to my original plan to write about indie rock, my personal favorite genre, but is all over the place style and form wise. The writing skills felt fairly basic, simply connecting my points with the overarching theme, being the genre conventions of blues rock, and then connecting the points together. It was however a challenging thinking exercise. As said above, I picked a topic I was very familiar with which in the end hurt me because I needed to work in citations after the fact, causing very heavy revisions later. An important note I made for future research projects was to get my sources BEFORE writing and build my paper around them, not the sources around my paper. I relied too heavily on my own knowledge and ended up hurting the quality of my writing. This can be seen throughout my writing, mainly around the in-text citations, where I felt they seemed choppy and almost off-putting. Limited time was also a heavy influence on this paper and was definitely a lesson in proper time management.

Overview

To begin, I have been a distance runner for the last 6 years of my life, running competitively in Cross Country, track, winter track and for enjoyment in practices and various races year round. I credit running with instilling in me the mental drive, motivation, determination and positive attitude that have proven vital in helping me get through the ratline. However, people often look at distance running in a very negative light, ranging from simply looking down on runners as athletes to not even including it as a sport. Having ran competitively and for enjoyment for much of my life I find it appalling that many people see running as simply ‘exercise’ or a waste of time and not the vibrant and massive community, highly competitive sport and encompassing culture it really is. Collected through personal experience and online sources, I hope to change at least a few minds regarding how people view distance running and the discourse group around it.

Training

One thing that many people do not understand or often do not realize about distance running is the massive level of training that goes into it on a professional and amateur level. Speaking as an amateur, I can say with 100% confidence that the Cross Country team worked the hardest and longest out of every other sport, with each individual on the team putting up at least a thousand miles total per season. Our workouts are carefully planned three to four months in advance by our coach and as such, were just about never cancelled due to weather, even if they were, we would meet up on our own and run together anyways. Through blizzard and a hurricane, hail and humidity, we ran all but six weeks out of the year and showed a level of commitment unmatched by the other teams.

On a professional level, running is all-encompassing. Every meal must be taken into account, every hour of sleep and relaxation accounted for and made the most of and 2 to 3 heavy running sessions a day. Mo Farrah, an Olympian Distance Runner, for example runs a 135 mile week with not one of those miles taking longer than 6 minutes. Mo also has an intensive gym workout along with those the crazy miles and paces. Running at a professional level is just as intense if not more so then playing for a professional football or baseball team.

More important than this training is becoming part of the culture. Long distance running instills a special attitude in an individual; a determination, positive outlook  it takes a special thought process to be in the mindset to say “Wow I really want to run 10 miles just because.” This mindset was drilled into me personally by my coach, who was famous for never cancelling a practice; by the time of my class’s graduation, we would often opt specifically to run in the worst conditions, having unofficial practices (in short shorts) through blizzards, long ran through Hurricane Sandy and essentially prided ourselves in loving to go through the worst of it. This esprit de corps and embrace the suck attitude we found carried over to the other teams we raced and I have not encountered again until matriculating VMI.

History

No other sport on the planet has a history as old and fabled as that of distance runners; reaching back far into ancient times to the first human tribes in Africa, where early man would ‘endurance hunt’ animals by literally running them to death, to Classical Greece where running was a paramount event in the Olympic games and continues to be to this day. Because of this long history, there are many major historical runners for any given event that you’ll find the majority of serious runners know; for me and my team (as a primarily 5k-orientated team), practically idolized Steve Prefontaine, often being quizzed on his quotes and watch movies about him during team hangouts. The sprinters during track season had similar rituals with men like Ussain Bolt and Tyson Gay. There is a level of connection with the past and the greats of today in running that really is not present in other sports due to the best times are often years, if not decades old, making running a constant struggle with the past itself.

Characteristics of a Discourse Community

Distance running, with all of its clear traditions, training and other unifying factors, is clearly a discourse community. We have a broad set of agreed goals, to get faster, run farther, partake in more runs and get over injuries faster. Running blogs and magazines are very popular and all over the internet, providing a clear source of detailed communication, feedback and information between members of the discourse community. The lexis of runners is also very specific and just about unrecognizable from an outside prospective. Many of the stranger words are based around training, these include things like fartlek, Vo2 max, an individual’s ‘threshold’, running a ‘pick up’, runner’s economy, a split, to ‘bonk’ or hit the wall, to get a runner’s high, taking taper and tempo pace. Runners also get very specific when describing feet and shoes, using various medical terms they average person wouldn’t know, like medial, cushioning, outsole, insole, and others.

Runners also have a system of novices and masters of varying experience levels, novice runners can join through various means, talking to runners, joining a cross team or club in school or a gym, through friends or through the internet. Runner experience is gained through years of competitive running and a runner over 40 is often referred to as a ‘master’ in the US. This ranking system is unique among sports and further separates running from the others and further connecting running with its roots much more than any other sports.

Multiple Literacies

Long distance running is not the only type of running, the generally agreed upon division of running is by how far an event is. This makes for three distinct running literacies, long, mid and short distance running.

Short distance running, more commonly called sprints, involves the 100, 200 and 400 meter dashes and relays. They require explosiveness, much more muscle strength (sprinters tend to be much more physically defined) and begin their events from ‘blocks’ at the starting line. Sprint training often involves much less continuous running and more repetitions with a long break period in between. All of these make for a much different experience.

Mid Distance running involves all events between 800 and 3200 meters runs and as such, has the most mixed training regimen. Mid distance running requires the speed of a sprinter but the endurance of a long distance runner. During track, I personally ran the 800 and 1600 meter run and I would happily admit that both of those events are much harder than the 5000 meter during Cross Country season. These events require a horrible mix of speed and the ability to not only hold that speed, but increase it as the race goes on. As said above, these events combine long and short distance training and often involve a mix of both types of runners.

Long distance running is anything above 3200 meters and can also involve timed races, meaning an individual runs as far as they can in a certain amount of time, for example, my coach took part in a 12 hour race and ran ~60 miles,  while others may have done more, less or around the same. This type of running is mostly endurance training with long sprints and high repetition short sprint based training. This type of training often contrasts the muscular build of a sprinter of mid distance runners and makes a very lean fit individual. Running these races is similar to mid distance running, requiring the maintaining of speed over incredible distance, making long distance running much more mentally taxing then the other types of running.

Each of these different running types almost qualify for different sports with the huge amount of difference between them. This is something no other sports can really say about people on the same team, an offensive lineman can be moved to the other side of the ball in football no problem, everyone on the baseball team can hit a ball, but to go from a sprinter to a distance runner would take easily at least a year of pretty intense training to get an athletes body in condition to handle a change like that.

Conclusion

Running is without question its own discourse group, given its long standing traditions and history, its hierarchal structure of experience and ability, means of communication between its members be it blogs, websites, magazines or word of mouth and its multiple literacies involving different types of training, events and people. Runners have their own lexis and can communicate for long periods of times about things the general public would not understand. More importantly as noted above, the devotion one must have to their given distance and overall friendly, motivated personalities of the majority of runners is one thing that sets runners apart from other sports. Running at all levels is one of the hardest, physically exerting activities one can take partake in and most assuredly should be treated with equal respect as throwing a ball.

Bibliography

Eck, Beth Moxey. “Glossary of Running Terms.” Runner’s World. Runner’s World, 21 Sept. 2001. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Murray, Robb. “Mo Farah’s Typical Weekly Training Schedule.” Training a Runner RSS. Training a Runner, 09 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.