Invisible landscape
My high school cross-country course is an invisible landscape because when no race is going on there are no markings to show it is there. It just looks like fields and hills. When people see it they might notice there are soccer fields and think that it is the only purpose of the area. Many people do not know much about cross country, so the thought they could be in a cross country course would never even cross their minds. It is a place that has a lot of memories for many people on the Pennridge cross country team or other teams we went against. The memories could be positive or negative depending on the experience of the day. Since I experienced practice and meets here for 4 years it is a very obvious landscape for me when I see it and it reminds me of many good memories I had with the team. It is not a course most people would draw because it is very hill dominated, but that did not stop my coach from making that the course. On days of meets, it stops being invisible temporarily with cones and paint spread across the course, so people know where to go. People might notice the track and think that is where most of the running takes place and forget about the massive cross-country course about 10 times bigger than the track in the land area. It is the biggest section dedicated to a sport in the school and most people would not know where it is or where it goes if they do not know someone on the team or happened to see a meet while they are on soccer fields or the practice football field. Some spectators of cross-country meets may not even know where the runners go because sometimes there will be spots that are very hard to spectate. Some cross-country courses are very well-defined while some leave you guessing where you have to go. There are no requirements for the type of terrain run on for a course or the directions to create a course and at the high school level, some have different distances while trying to be as close to five kilometers as possible. This can make a cross-country course be anywhere, some are on roads or through fields, but an outside observer would not be able to see it. Most places where a sport is played are very detectable to outsiders whether they are being played at that moment or the spot where it is played is unoccupied. Cross country is defined as a sport where runners run over natural terrain like dirt or grass, so it is by definition a sport that does not have to make a big mark on the world if the organizers of the race choose not to.
2 comments:
I have a very similar experience just with a different sport. Back when I was still in elementary and middle school, we used to hold our football practices on a field behind our elementary school that was just an open area of grass. It was surrounded by trees, had a random massive burn pile, and was incredible unremarkable whenever you looked at it. For me, however, there is literally almost a decade of memories on that large field as I practiced on it from the age of 5-14. Super cool to see how cross country can have a very similar "you can make almost anything a cross country track" type idea to it!
I can definitely relate to this as I ran cross country all through middle and high school, the number of courses I've stepped foot on is too many to count, so many of our courses were at high schools- our home course actually changed a few times, it's amazing to me how big of a deal a race is to the runners and the majority of the school doesn't even have a clue something happened the evening before where they're standing.
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