I love cross country meets. These words, verbatim, come from my mouth at least 10 times during any meet I attend. I get a runner's high just by proximity.
I'll tell you why.
Races are pure. Runners run. The faster, the better. The fastest runners win. It's the simplest form of sport. There's no advantage to kids or schools with more money. It doesn't matter if you're the coach's kid, or if the coach hates you. You don't receive playing time or bench time by how connected your parents are to the politics of the sport.
You just run.
It's a team sport in scoring method, but your team can't hold you back from doing your individual best.
And while the runners are trying to beat each other, they are really trying to best themselves. At the end of the race, it comes down to the competition between the runner and the clock. Is the time faster than it was the last time? If so, you've won.
Everybody earns clapping and cheering at the finish chute, no matter the uniform they wear, no matter if they are the one breaking the tape or the one lagging at the end. The closest thing to contentiousness is rooting for athletes to kick it in and catch the runners in front of them.
This sport doesn't have the equivalent of cheering when your opponent fumbles or strikes out or misses a shot. I saw a runner fall yesterday, and I saw the distress on the face of someone from another school on the sideline, conflicted that she couldn't help the runner up, lest it result in a disqualification. (She did ultimately help the runner, who wasn't a frontrunner, and didn't decline the assistance.)
Any athlete who enters a race and runs 2 miles or 5 miles or 26.2 miles, gutting it out and pushing themselves beyond their own limits, earns and receives respect. And a cool Gatorade at the end.
