Wussy Sprinters

I was reading an article in the paper this week about the latest greatest high school football player. He was quoted as saying that when he was younger he could simply out-sprint everyone. He was lamenting the fact that he now had to work at it. I think that cuts to the core of why I’ve always had a problem with sprinters.

Sprinters are born with the gift of speed. They were born with a high percentage of fast twitch muscles. They can run quickly over short distances. Most of our games and sports require speed, so the sprinters excel at sports from their earliest days in school. They don’t work at it. They don’t practice it. They are simply born with the gift of speed, and everyone admires them for it. I fail to understand why society admires sprinters for a gift they were born with and have not earned.

On the other hand distance runners are born with the gift of slow twitch muscles and slow heart rates. These are great talents to be born with, but society does not admire them much compared to the sprinter. The ability to run a long distance quickly is just as rare as the ability to run a short distance quickly, but requires much more training and discipline. Yet society admires the sprinter. The choice defies logic.

In my high school days the sprinters showed up for track practice where they stretched for a little bit, practiced a few starts out of the blocks, never ran for more than 60 yards at a time, and then headed for the showers. The distance guys would warm-up for a mile or more, run 8 x 400 yards with a 400 yard recovery jog between each repeat, and then warm down for a mile or more. Our workouts were at least 6 miles or more. The sprinters were usually home watching cartoons before the distance guys reached the showers.

Any wuss can run 100 meters; elementary school kids can do that. But, only the most highly trained athletes can run 10,000 meters. So who are the REAL athletes that are worthy of our admiration?