Essay peer review

In our current society there are a variety of sports and a variety of levels for each. With this comes a wide variety of toughness and difficulty. This toughness and difficulty that I have attributed to these sports are dependant upon a variety of factors including, skill, training, diet, and most importantly, the mental/physical toughness that is required. Few sports require an athlete to be proficient in all, and even fewer make it necessary for an athlete to be excellent in all. Sports I believe that are of this nature include basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, wrestling. I also believe that there is one that trumps each of those and that is running or track. To perform any sport at the highest level requires years of hardwork and dedication, it requires putting your sport above all else, but none equal what it takes to be a runner at the highest level.

This belief comes from years of experience with not only running, but a majority of the sports listed. At this point in my life I have been running for seven track seasons and seven cross country seasons, yet my interest in this discussion was sparked only three years ago. This realization about the difficulty of running relative to other sports began sophomore year when I was in my highschool’s trainer room during the indoor track season. I happened to be in there with a football player getting treatment the day before his last game of the season, and a basketball player getting ready for his first. We were talking about our upcoming competitions when another basketball player came in the room offering us french fries. Unfortunately, and I had to say no. The other two players immediately took up the offer and asked why I said no. I told them there was no way I could eat that and still race that night. I explained that it would give me a cramp, makes me sick to my stomach, or just make me feel tired and slower. Their response to this is something I still hear in my head this day: “man that's crazy i don’t know how you do that sh*t bro, what do you even do at practice, like just run?” My answer to that question has unintentionally become the centerpiece of my argument as to why running is the toughest sport. My answer was:“well its kinda like your conditioning practices except like everyday.”

Provided that is quite an understatement, I felt it was sufficient in giving them and myself a basic but strong understanding of the argument I am presenting today. 

In terms of what runners do and how much time it takes, training for cross country and track and field is vastly different from what many think. I often hear the argument “all you have to do is go and run a little bit, that’s so easy” (frustrating member of the golf team). Practices involve different kinds of workouts, including recovery, “workout days” which are essentially speed days, and dedicated mileage days. Here is a week of a training schedule from the article “Go the Distance” that could help with an understanding of what I mean. My schedule would be more difficult, in terms of mileage and pace. Another good aspect of this article is the section on nutrition and diet. Being as this was what essentially started this whole thing it is probably a topic that should be included.

As spoken to previously, nutrition and diet are very important for a runner, I believe they are paramount. Competing at all sports at a high level requires a proper diet, but running requires an extra level that is not as necessary in other sports. This is something easily shown as it pertains to all levels of running. Look back on your personal experiences with running, either at the gym, competitively, or even just playing when you were younger. If you didn’t eat the right thing or at the proper time, you would undoubtedly get sick pretty quickly. This carries on as you get older, if a runner indulges on a friday night with overeating, drinking, or even eating poorly it will affect your ability to perform in your workout the next morning. Similar for other sports, if you get drunk then you will be be hungover, but that it is not my argument. I am saying that the effects of being hungover and eating five slices of pizza will be worse in running than other sports. Try eating 5 slices of pizza and test the difference between a 2 hour basketball practice and a 40 minute long run. Hint you will most likely throw up while doing the latter of the two.

While quite obvious, it is still important to mention that this carries on into competition. I along with many sport fans can remember reports about NFL Star Marshawn Lynch eating skittles on the sideline during games. I remember after hearing this I took it upon myself to think about other sports and if this would be possible. All seemed quite feasible with the exception of running and soccer (a sport which requires players to run almost constantly). Then, I was fortunate enough to see my hypothesis tested when a highschool friend of mine was told he would have to hop into a race that was to start in 5 minutes. Normally such conditions would not be horrible, but in this case he had just downed an entire bag of skittles (just like Lynch). Wide eyed and worried (due to that specific reason) he lined up for the race. As expected, when the race was over he had ended up running a time 15 seconds slower than where he regularly finished and was on the verge of getting sick.

Runners have to take a lot of precautions when eating before a meet, many professional’s will choose to avoid nearly anything other than light carbs and specific fruits and vegetables days before hand. This is in order to not only have food in you that don’t make you sick, but to also have your body fully energized. Which allows you to push yourself as hard as you can throughout the whole race. Which is definitely not a factor in all sports.

Football players are given the luxury of timeouts, penalties, challenges, quarters and even halftimes, where there is complete stoppage of everything. When this is mentioned in an argument, many people in the surrounding area choose to chime in. They tend to agree and say that football is easier because you get breaks from the physical. While that is true, I argue a different point to that information that many won’t understand. While you do not get any breaks from running during a race, you also get zero breaks from pushing your mind and body. While some argue that in basketball you are constantly running up and down the court every single change of possession, one can not argue that you give your all every single fastbreak and transition. Running is a nonstop mental game from the gun going off to the crossing of the finish line.

Keeping in theme, running is the only sport where you have to give your all every second that the clock is running or you have lost. Pushing yourself in such a way requires extreme amounts of physical fitness, and even more importantly: mental strength. Which I find separates the great runners from the good.

Many do not understand this. They can not understand that running requires one to push themselves in such a way in both physical and mental capacities. This misunderstanding is often what sparks the others side’s argument. The most often ignorant otherside has no experience and in turn an inability to understand that running is not easy. This often leads to the other side saying things such as: “running requires zero skill in basketball you have to be able to shoot, finish, pass, and dribble.” 

While this may be true, the fact that other sports require more skill. it is inaccurate that running requires none. One's stride and running posture by itself can be the difference in any given race. Along with stride there are many other factors of running that include skills. Running a 1600 meter race (1 mile) is more than just sprinting for 4 laps. There are specific positions a runner needs to get to at certain points in the race, there are certain ways to sit on people and know when and how to move past them that all require deep skills in order to perform well.

I could go on and on listing different parts of races that require skill, but what is most important in my refuting of this argument is running may require less skill than other sports it still requires a high amount of skill. Other sports may also require a high amount of skill, and a high amount of dedication, toughness and determination. But if one were to somehow make a calculation that combines all of these factors. The factors both mental and physical that are required to be outstanding in any given sport, running would have the highest sum. On all levels, from middle school to pro to part time to stay in shape, running is the highest, running would win.

 

Questions

1. How is the conclusion structure, like should the first sentence be a part of the previous paragraph?

2. Is the works cited page supposed to be double spaced?

3. The last sentence of my intro paragraph is my thesis statement. Should I split it up into 2 sentences rather than just the one?