In Year 7 and 8, the
cross country route at school was alright; going up the castle and back down
again, heading back to school. I found it fairly challenging, but that’s the
idea I suppose. However, due to health and safety reasons, this route was ‘discontinued’;
someone important decided the course was too dangerous, as we had to cross a
road, and staff couldn’t watch us all the way round.
So, they changed it
when I was in Year 9. I prefer this new route, as its flatter and generally
easier, but it’s not exactly cross country. We run round the school field, then
round the football field, along the canal path to the leisure centre and
repeat. I always thought the idea of
cross country was, especially in the lake district, to run up and down some
hills on different types of terrain; grassy, flat, smooth, bumpy, hard, soft
and all the rest of it. School’s new course is just squidgy all the way round,
which is not enjoyable. In my opinion, it is not cross country at all; it is
little more than a soggy jog that everyone thinks is a waste of time.
In the race today,
there were 17 girls running, and about 80 boys. All boys were made to do it,
but only girls from my half of the year had to run, and even then half of them didn’t
do it. Last year, I placed 5th out of the rest of the girls, and
this year I won. I put this down to a number of things – lack of competition,
lack of motivation in the small amount of competition and the pressure from my
family to do well.
Basically, my point
is, cross country within school needs to be changed, or scrapped altogether. No
one enjoys it as the conditions are always pretty rubbish, and there’s nothing
to look forward to at the finish line, apart from a nice sit down. If school
got rid of cross country and maybe did something different in the summer, when
the weather is better, students would be much more open minded.
