Dedication and hard work, even when faced with adversities such as 13 mile long runs every Sunday, has defined the sport of Cross Country and through the common goals shared by its athletes has made the sport a discourse community.  In spite of becoming more civil and modernized in recent times for competitive events, distance running has been in the bloodline of humans since the very first man; the pursuit of tracking and running down game for miles at a time or relaying messages from battle to battle in times before electronic communication was created and used gives testament to the sport of Cross country and the people that were necessary and capable to become a part of this discourse community.

A Cross Country team sets common goals which are to win as a team at their championship race and to support each other as individuals throughout the season. These goals set the tone of the cross country community by creating strong bonds between runners in the community as they strive to win together while still offering each other friendly competition. The community values persistent hard work and the idea to never quit even after the point of exhaustion and reflects this belief in the strength of bonds that are created between runners that will last throughout their lives.

The people in this community separate themselves from other genres of running, like sprinting, in that the sport is far more about completing large volumes of miles, 80-100 miles a week for serious D1 college competitors, then simply refining short bursts of energy. In result, the community of distance runners has developed unique lexis and intercommunication on their distance runs. The runners within the community have developed prominent respect for other individuals within the community since they understand the dedication and hard work required to be able to maintain this high mileage.

Communication within the community and lexis such as fartlek’s, tempo workouts, strides and accelerations and economy work is only the outermost layer of the true communication of the Cross Country community. In result of the long distance and constant strain on the bodies of cross country runners the community has called for the need of trainers to treat runner’s persisting acute injuries. From a sprain of the ankle to season ending stress fractures a trainer is used by all cross country runners to help maintain and prevent injuries from occurring.  The trainer is a large center of authority for runners since they know the stress put upon runners bodies and can give insight on what is happening to prevent the runner from being able to train at peak performance. Without trainers the cross country community would become a much more damaged and broken place.

Cross country is a discourse community because of the clothes that the runners in the community wear that separates them from other genres of sports. The identifiable running shorts that are designed to minimize the amount of resistance of clothing and weight on the legs define the community. Sing lets that are worn on the upper body of runners is designed to reduce weight and resistance to arm swing. While these clothes may seem revealing and even awkward to people outside the community they serve a key purpose and are a defining reason as to why Cross country is a discourse community.

A key center of authority that can be seen in all areas when referring to a cross country team is a head coach. Running may seem to be simple and that it only requires to go out and run yet in more competitive areas of the sport cross country has required the need for a coach that can give athletes refined workouts formulated to meet the specific goals of each athlete. A coach sets the tone in each individual group of cross country teams yet in every team they are seen as a key source of knowledge and wisdom in the sport making cross country a discourse community. A Cross Country community is almost a family in many ways since a head coach creates bonds with a runner that resembles the relationship of a parent. The bond encourages the pursuit of athletes to reach their goals as a team in order to make their coach proud.

Cross country runners have come together and created a solution in area known to be their expertise: long distance communication. They did this by being able to document and record there times on a central website that all runners can read and look at to see how other runners in the world are running, the website is milestat.com. Using this website created by this discourse community the viewer can look up any individual runner in the community to see how she or he has done in every race since the beginning of their career.  The website fits the idea of a community being connected by a common text that shows runners how their competition is doing throughout the season and will also give college recruiters a great place to start to see who is doing well in the running community.

The discourse community of a Cross Country team has multiple genres of communication within itself that can change drastically depending on the individual runner and whether the run is a race, hard workout, or simple recovery day. The genre can be deathly serious and focused as a runner mentally prepares for the task at hand such as a championship race or an important workout that will mark his or her place on the team. Yet directly after race the communication genre can change sharply to being happy and outgoing as the endorphins from the workout set in and the relief of running well changes the mood and the overall communication between the runners. The changing of genres of communication shows that the community is diverse while having its own variances and language that define the community and the goal they are trying to accomplish at the time.

The long runs conducted by the cross country community have lead the community to develop a unique set of lexis and attitudes that separate the community from other similar communities. While many people would expect to think that individual words or phrases were developed, while some were, the community has developed a different kind of communication that is not traditional to the normal human verbal speech. Body language is the key lexis used in the cross country community. When performing at these high levels of aerobic strain speaking can sometimes be very challenging. Cross country runners can understand different signs from a runner such as flailing hands or hunched shoulders that tell a competitor that their opponent is tired and the movement of a teammate’s hand telling each other to move up or maintain their current pace. The runners also can hear the heavy breathing and grunts of a runner that is struggling, or the encouraging grunt of a teammate to move faster. Even though these forms of communication are not traditional to most communities of speech they still are the key factors of the lexis and communication of the cross country community.

An example of how to that Cross Country is a discourse community is to show the integration of a new member of the community. Most runners start off running small amounts through elementary school yet never realize the expansive volume of the sport until they reach high school and later college. A new runner, or freshman, will first find themselves entering the community when they go on a long run the first time with their new team and will slowly begin to see the language between the runners and the communication of running side by side for miles while sometimes never saying a word. At the conclusion of the run the team will recover while doing stretches and visiting in the trainer’s room. This is a time when a new aspect of the language of the team will come out as people share their “PR’s”, an acronym for personal record for a specific race in the running community, and also basic stories about their lives. A cross country team in many instances can be seen as individual teams, which in many cases seem almost like families that make up the larger idea of a discourse community as a whole.

Being a D1 college runner myself I am able to give testament to the fact that Cross Country fits the definition of a discourse community in that it has its own sets of lexis and communication, as well as sets common goals for the overall community. A small goal that cannot be overlooked within the community is to maintain the high level of conditioning while still preventing injury from occurring. A cross country runner must do this via trainers and proper stretching and cooling down after every race if they want to continue to strive toward their main goal as a cross country runner: to run as fast as possible and place within the top five of your team in order to score. The application of running, understanding the body language of an opponent to know when he or she is worth passing or staying with, and preventing injury are all common goals of Cross country runners that lead to their main goal which is to win as a team and as individuals.

The discourse community of cross country running cannot be overlooked. Runners have been in the bloodlines of humans since the first very first man and while some may only see the community as a handle full of gauntly looking people running around in short shorts they must not overlook the history of the sport and the hard work and dedication of those that run and come together to make up the discourse community. The bonds created in the community through the time spent on long runs and respect gained from fierce competition creates relationships that will last a life time which makes it seem that once a person joins a Cross Country team, they will remain in the discourse community in many ways for the rest of their lives.