Track and Field is perhaps the oldest sport known to man. Ever since the time of the Greeks and Romans, man has always wanted to know who is faster than the rest. Even today man still is a bit curious about this. With that being said, you will learn a lot of lessons from being a track athlete. Many of them will stick with you for the rest of your life, and they are all not easy lessons to learn.
The first, and perhaps most important lesson which you will learn is that of perseverance. You will never do well at your first track meet. You probably won’t do well at your second or third meet either. It’s normal. Eventually, you will either quit, or you will persevere and succeed. Track isn’t for everyone, while to the outsider, it seems that it is just running. It’s a lot more complicated. Many track athletes are some of the most disciplined athletes in the world. This leads us to our next topic, which is that of self-discipline.
Not everyone is self-disciplined, in fact most people aren’t. Self-discipline is one of the most important traits that someone can have. It is what keeps people up at night studying before a big test, or what helps you work 18-hour days before you have a big presentation tomorrow. It is really important that track athletes have a lot of self-discipline for a few reasons. Firstly track is one of the few sports that are an individual one. For the most part, athletes compete against each other, and there is very little teamwork involved. If you don’t have the discipline to diet, and practice regularly, it’s unlikely that you will be very successful at your next race. If you don’t have the discipline to stay home from the party to study, you probably won’t be very successful on your test on Monday. The self-discipline that many runners have is almost legendary amongst college athletes. The track and field team at most colleges is usually the highest achieving team both athletically, and academically. It is truly amazing.
The next lesson that you learn in Track is respect. Some of the time, the people who you are competing against are on your own team. You know these people and you train with them regularly. Every so often either you will beat them, or they will beat you. They don’t mean any harm to you, its just how the game works. Therefore, respect to your opponent, is essential for track athletes. In life, it is also important to respect people, and it is especially important to respect your opponents. These are people that in real life are normally out to harm you or your lifestyle. If you don’t respect your adversary, it can end really badly for you. It’s not a lesson that you want to learn the hard way.
Our last lesson you learn from competing in track and field is that of honesty. In track, you can easily cheat; it’s not too hard to jump the gun a bit at a race. But once one person starts cheating, other will follow suit. In life, cheating and dishonesty is also easy. But eventually, you will get caught, and getting caught never ends well, and most of the time, it can be really unpleasant. From track and field, you will learn that there are severe consequences for cheating, and they are not pleasant.
To end, Track and Field is one of the greatest sports known to man. Athletes who compete can learn a lot about themselves, and others. In short, everyone should at the very least give track a try.