6 years ago, I remember stepping into a room called the multipurpose room. There was a woman named Joan Bachynsky who was standing in front of the room in front of various freshmen and upperclassmen. The meeting was in regards to joining the varsity cross country team. I wanted to join because I saw it as an opportunity to improve my stamina so I could be ready for basketball team. Ms. Bachynsky told us how the team would be organized, how many times a week we would have practice and where we would have practice.
A week after that meeting, we held our first practice. We stretched and warmed up so that our bodies would not get tense and falter during the run. Ms. Bachynsky told us that we would only do only one lap around the Harlem Meer, which was about a mile loop around a body of water in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We started to run and the first few minutes felt okay and normal to me, but after another few minutes, my stomach started to hurt and my legs started to cramp to the point that I wanted to throw up. However, I continued and finished the run. I remember going to the sidelines and just asking myself, Why am I do this? The pain I felt after that run was something I never felt in my life. Luckily, the pain receded and I started to feel myself, but I did have an epiphany: running hurts, but the rewards that come with it outweigh the pain and dismay.
The reason why I say that the rewards of running outweigh the the pain of running is because running is one of the few sports that does not have any timeouts or regulations. It is a mental and physical sport that pushes the mind of a human being to new extremes that were not thought possible by the individual because they had not been challenged mentally. The sport of running also pushes the body to new extremes, which leads to discovery of one's body and how it functions and the limits it has. Yes, running is painful and it will always be, but the philosophy we develop from running can be applied to any situation and circumstance, which to me is a reward that outweighs the pains, cramps, and tensions that running causes, during the physical portions.
