Running-Personal Narrative

Zac O’Neal

Kines 2500

Try Something New Assignment

For the try something new assignment, I decided that I wanted to try trail running. Growing up I played plenty of physically demanding games that required quite a bit of running around, such games include lacrosse and soccer. However, in these games, running is not something to take joy in or to do for the sake of running, running was to be done in order that one could get better at the overall sport. Furthermore, in these games I was always trained to go full speed for short bursts of time, then quickly recover and go again. I got the idea to go trail running from a friend of mine who it seems is always going out running, coming back late at night covered in sweat. Whenever he came back

For example, on my first run, it felt like I was always tripping over rocks, I felt like I was always running out of energy to continue running, and as a result of these factors, I was immensely frustrated with myself for not being able to perform this activity to the level that I would expect myself to perform. The adaptivity of human motor behavior played a role in fixing the first problem of always tripping over things, as after the run I realized that my problem was that I was not picking up my feet far enough from the ground to get over some of the rocks, and by going on a few runs since and focusing on lifting up my feet a bit more and making sure that they don’t drag, I no longer have that problem. As far as running out of energy to quickly goes, it was after a few more runs and noticing how other people ran on the trails that I was able to solve that problem, I realized that my years of playing lacrosse had trained my to run quickly, but for short periods of time, on the trail I had been pushing myself too hard, resulting in quick tiring and many breaks. Once I realized this, I was slowly, over the next half dozen runs, able to slow myself down and focus on moving along at a more consistent pace. Lastly, sport psychology played a huge role in how the overall experience of trying out trail running. As with most things, humans