essays about running

Essay on Running

Students are often asked to write an essay on Running in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Running

The joy of running.

Running is a simple yet powerful activity that can bring both physical and mental benefits. It’s a universal exercise that anyone can do, anywhere, anytime.

Physical Benefits

Running helps to strengthen muscles, improve cardiovascular fitness, and maintain a healthy weight. Regular running can also boost your immune system and increase longevity.

Mental Benefits

Running can help reduce stress and improve mood. It releases endorphins, often known as ‘happy hormones’, which can make you feel more positive and energetic.

Running and Friendship

Running can also be a social activity. Joining a running club or participating in races can help you make new friends.

250 Words Essay on Running

The essence of running.

Running is an excellent cardiovascular exercise that strengthens the heart, reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and helps maintain a healthy weight. It also improves bone health, reducing the risk of osteoporosis, and enhances muscular strength and endurance.

Mental and Emotional Impact

Beyond the physical, running has profound mental and emotional implications. It is known to release endorphins, often referred to as ‘runner’s high’, leading to improved mood and reduced stress levels. It also fosters mental resilience as runners learn to push through discomfort and fatigue, skills transferable to other life challenges.

Social and Environmental Connection

Running fosters a sense of community, with runners often forming close-knit groups. These communities provide support, motivation, and camaraderie, enriching the running experience. Running also deepens our connection with the environment as it often takes place outdoors, providing an opportunity to appreciate nature’s beauty.

In essence, running is more than just a form of exercise; it is a holistic activity that promotes physical health, mental resilience, emotional wellbeing, and social connection. It encourages us to push beyond our limits, to explore our potential, and to appreciate the world around us. The beauty of running lies not in the finish line, but in the journey itself.

500 Words Essay on Running

Running, a fundamental human activity, is a complex interaction between the mind and body. It is an exercise that transcends the physical realm, providing mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits. It is not merely a form of physical exercise; it is a metaphor for life, embodying resilience, endurance, and the pursuit of goals.

Running and Physical Health

Running and mental well-being.

Beyond the physical benefits, running has profound effects on mental health. It acts as a stress reliever, providing an outlet for pent-up emotions and frustrations. The release of endorphins during running induces a sense of euphoria, often referred to as the “runner’s high.” This mental state can help combat depression and anxiety, promoting a sense of calm and well-being.

Running as a Social Activity

Running can also serve as a social activity. Joining running clubs or participating in marathons fosters a sense of community and camaraderie. It encourages teamwork and cooperation, promoting mutual support and shared achievement. This social aspect of running can help individuals feel more connected and less isolated, enhancing their sense of belonging and social well-being.

Running as a Life Metaphor

Running and mindfulness.

Running fosters mindfulness, a state of active, open attention to the present. The rhythmic pattern of footfalls, the sensation of the wind against the skin, the rhythmic breathing – all these elements bring the runner into the present moment, away from the worries of the past or the future. This mindful state can promote mental clarity, emotional balance, and a deeper understanding of oneself.

The Future of Running

The future of running is promising, with advances in technology providing new avenues for enhancing running experiences. Innovations like wearables and running apps provide runners with detailed feedback on their performance, helping them optimize their runs. Virtual races and augmented reality apps are transforming the running landscape, making it more engaging and accessible.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

My Worst Best Marathon

When I arrived in Chicago for the 2021 marathon last week, I had every reason to believe I would beat my previous marathon time: a 3:29 at the 2020 Los Angeles Marathon that put me minutes under the Boston Marathon qualifying threshold. Qualifying for Boston is a big achievement for most runners, one I was proud of, and one I wanted to surpass. But it wasn't to be.

Eighteen months ago, I probably would have been too ashamed or embarrassed to write this story. But today, I'm surprised to find that not only do I want to, I feel proud to write it. The truth is, I've changed. I still want to chase big goals and push myself. But what happened Sunday during the 26.2 miles of the race made me better — even if it was my worst marathon time yet.

Running was not just a thing I did, it was a place I went. Somewhere I could be alone and let my thoughts unspool, or barely think at all.

When I started running more seriously five years ago, I instantly applied my Type A ambition to the endeavor. Running meant getting faster with every race. And for years, I did just that. Then, just a few short days after my running pinnacle at the LA Marathon, the city shut down. The pandemic took hold. I kept running, pulling up my mask whenever I came within 12 feet of my neighbors, but I was adrift. Like so many of us, I was full of grief for all we had lost, and a wave of depression left me feeling physically sick. It was hard to wake up in the mornings. My stomach always hurt. I cried when I listened to the news, then felt guilty for the crashing waves of my emotions, knowing how privileged I was and how much worse so many other people had it. But I still ran. I needed to. Running was not just a thing I did, it was a place I went. Somewhere I could be alone and let my thoughts unspool, or barely think at all. On my early-pandemic runs, I would ruminate on the beauty of the jacaranda trees in my neighborhood, leaving behind the stress that awaited me when I returned home to my computer and my phone, taking deep breaths and feeling how precarious and wonderful it was to be able to do just that. Then, in the summer of 2020, I sprained my ankle. Badly. Being injured is always hard. This time it was harder.

It was a long road back to recovery from me, both physically and when it came to mental wellness. But I dedicated myself to focusing on both. Not to, I felt, would be to disrespect everyone who wasn't able to do just that. I had to get better, I thought, simply because I had the opportunity to do it. I started back slow. In June of this year, when Nike asked me if I wanted to train for another marathon , I knew I was ready. I started working with running coach Rebeka Stowe to get race-ready for Chicago. It was a joyful training cycle. The world was cautiously reopening, and people were gathering together again. I ran with Koreatown Run Club and alongside my good friend Sheena as she prepared for the LA Marathon. I felt my speed returning, my belief in my running ability and my athletic determination trickling back into my body and brain.

Then it was race day. It wasn't long after I crossed the start line in Chicago that I realized I didn't feel right. I pride myself on my steel will, my ability to push through discomfort, and my dedication. I mean, marathons are supposed to be hard. But it also became clear that not only would reaching my goal time be nearly impossible after my rocky start, but to do it would require sacrificing something I didn't want to give: the joy of the run, the first of the American major marathons to take place since the pandemic began.

By mile eight, I knew that strange, elusive alchemy that creates the ideal race had not come together for me that day. And I changed my goal. As I looked around me at the tens of thousands of people running, I decided to let awe wash over me. All of us had survived, and here we were, back together, trying to do this impossible-seeming thing. Wow. How lucky was I to be sharing the asphalt with other runners again? To be able to be in my body, to smile, to laugh at the corny marathon signs people hoisted at us from the sidewalks? So lucky. My new focus was to lean into that feeling of elation, of gratitude, and turn my race into a fun run. To be honest, most of the miles were still not that fun. I've lucked out in my running career; even in my previous marathons, I didn't really struggle. Of course, those races were extremely hard, but I felt good — if challenged — throughout. This was different. My guts were twisted. My mouth felt made of cotton. It simply was not in me. Did I make some rookie mistakes that contributed to that? Yes. Did some things completely out of my control impact my performance? Yes. But do I feel the need to go into detail, make excuses, or offer to anyone an explanation? No.

The last year and a half has changed me. I'm still driven to push myself and accomplish more as an athlete, a writer, a person in the world. But as I gave myself the grace and understanding I needed during those long 26.2 miles in Chicago, I realized I'd grown. I'd come to learn that being kind to yourself doesn't always mean giving up on yourself. Being gentle with yourself doesn't always equal letting yourself off the hook. Sometimes it just means allowing yourself the grace you'd give anyone else in that moment. And that's hard. But I did it. And for that, I'm proud.

Don't doubt it: I'm still going to get that personal record. I know my Boston qualifying time was no fluke and I absolutely believe I can do it again. But I don't feel like I have to do it in order to prove something to myself or anyone else this time, to post my finish time on Strava and Instagram and impress some people, to feel like I've earned the label "fast." So, while my time in the Chicago Marathon wasn't an achievement for me, the race no doubt was. I've become a better athlete, a better person, and a better friend to myself. How could that not be a win?

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How to Write a Non-Cliche College Essay About Sports + Examples

What’s covered:, what makes a sports essay cliche.

How To Make Your Sports Essay Unique

Great Examples of College Essays About Sports

Where to get your college essay edited for free, or by an expert.

You’ve been brainstorming essay topics for your college applications, and you think you’ve finally found the right one: an extended metaphor likening your experience on the field with overcoming personal struggles. The problem: many other students have this same thought.

The purpose of a college essay is to make yourself stand out as a unique individual, but when students write about sports, they often blend in. Because of that, students are usually advised to pick a different topic.

That being said, it is possible to write a non-cliche college essay about sports if you put in a little extra effort. Read along to learn how to make your sports essay different from all the other sports essays.

Sports essays are cliche when they follow a standard trajectory. Some of these trajectories include writing a story about:

An agonizing defeat
Forging bonds with teammates
Overcoming adversity
Overcoming an injury
Refusing to quit
Victory during a big game

Because sports essays have very similar themes and “lessons learned,” it can be difficult to make your story stand out. These trajectories also often focus too much on the sport or storyline, and not enough on the writer’s reflections and personality.

As you write your essay, try to think about what your experience says about you rather than what you learned from your experience. You are more than just one lesson you learned!

(Keep in mind that the sports essay is not the only college essay cliche. Learn about other essay cliches and how to fix them in our complete guide).

How to Make Your Sports Essay Unique

1. focus on a specific moment or reflection..

The college essay is a way for students to humanize themselves to admissions officers. You do not feel human if you are describing yourself as just another player on the field!

One important way to make your essay about you (not just about sports) is by focusing on a specific moment in time and inviting the reader to join you in that moment. Explain to the reader what it would be like to be sitting in that locker room as you questioned the values of the other players on your team. Ask your reader to sit with you on the cot in the trainer’s room as your identity was stripped away from you when they said “your body can’t take this anymore.” Bring your reader to the dinner table and involve them in your family’s conversation about how sports were affecting your mental health and your treatment of those around you.

Intense descriptions of a specific experience will evoke emotions in your reader and allow them to connect with you and feel for you.

When in doubt, avoid anything that can be covered by ESPN. On ESPN, we see the games, we see the benches, we even see the locker rooms and training rooms. Take your reader somewhere different and show them something unique.

2. Use sports to point out broader themes in your life.

The main risk when writing about sports is neglecting to write about yourself. Before you get started, think about the main values that you want to express in your sports essay. Sports are simply your avenue for telling the reader what makes you unique.

As a test, imagine if you were a pianist. Would you be able to talk about these same values? What if you were a writer? Or a chemist? Articulating your values is the end, and sports should simply be your means.

Some values that you might want to focus on:

Autonomy (you want to be able to set your mind to anything and achieve it on your own)
Growth (you seek improvement constantly)
Curiosity (you are willing to try anything once)
Vulnerability (you aren’t afraid to fail, as long as you give it your all)
Community (you value the feedback of others and need camaraderie to succeed)
Craft (you think that with deliberate care, anything can be perfected)
Responsibility (you believe that you owe something to those around you and perhaps they also owe something to you)

You can use the ESPN check again to make sure that you are using sports as an avenue to show your depth.

Things ESPN covers: how a player reacts to defeat, how injuries affect a player’s gameplay/attitude, how players who don’t normally work well together are working together on their new team.

Things ESPN doesn’t cover: the conversation that a player had with their mother about fear of death before going into a big surgery (value: family and connection), the ways that the intense pressure to succeed consumed a player to the point they couldn’t be there for the people in their life (value: supporting others and community), the body image issues that weigh on a player’s mind when playing their sport and how they overcame those (value: health and growth).

3. Turn a cliche storyline on its head.

There’s no getting around the fact that sports essays are often cliche. But there is a way to confront the cliche head-on. For example, lots of people write essays about the lessons they learned from an injury, victory, and so on, but fewer students explain how they are embracing those lessons.

Perhaps you learned that competition is overwhelming for you and you prefer teamwork, so you switched from playing basketball to playing Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe, when your softball career ended abruptly, you had to find a new identity and that’s when you became obsessed with your flower garden and decided to pursue botany. Or maybe, you have stuck with football through it all, but your junior-year mental health struggle showed you that football should be fun and you have since started a nonprofit for local children to healthily engage with sports.

If your story itself is more cliche, try bringing readers to the present moment with you and show why the cliche matters and what it did for you. This requires a fair amount of creativity. Ensure you’re not parroting a frequently used topic by really thinking deeply to find your own unique spin.

Night had robbed the academy of its daytime colors, yet there was comfort in the dim lights that cast shadows of our advances against the bare studio walls. Silhouettes of roundhouse kicks, spin crescent kicks, uppercuts and the occasional butterfly kick danced while we sparred. She approached me, eyes narrowed with the trace of a smirk challenging me. “Ready spar!” Her arm began an upward trajectory targeting my shoulder, a common first move. I sidestepped — only to almost collide with another flying fist. Pivoting my right foot, I snapped my left leg, aiming my heel at her midsection. The center judge raised one finger.

There was no time to celebrate, not in the traditional sense at least. Master Pollard gave a brief command greeted with a unanimous “Yes, sir” and the thud of 20 hands dropping-down-and-giving-him-30, while the “winners” celebrated their victory with laps as usual.

Three years ago, seven-thirty in the evening meant I was a warrior. It meant standing up straighter, pushing a little harder, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am”, celebrating birthdays by breaking boards, never pointing your toes, and familiarity. Three years later, seven-thirty in the morning meant I was nervous.

The room is uncomfortably large. The sprung floor soaks up the checkerboard of sunlight piercing through the colonial windows. The mirrored walls further illuminate the studio and I feel the light scrutinizing my sorry attempts at a pas de bourrée, while capturing the organic fluidity of the dancers around me. “Chassé en croix, grand battement, pique, pirouette.” I follow the graceful limbs of the woman in front of me, her legs floating ribbons, as she executes what seems to be a perfect ronds de jambes. Each movement remains a negotiation. With admirable patience, Ms. Tan casts me a sympathetic glance.

There is no time to wallow in the misery that is my right foot. Taekwondo calls for dorsiflexion; pointed toes are synonymous with broken toes. My thoughts drag me into a flashback of the usual response to this painful mistake: “You might as well grab a tutu and head to the ballet studio next door.” Well, here I am Master Pollard, unfortunately still following your orders to never point my toes, but no longer feeling the satisfaction that comes with being a third degree black belt with 5 years of experience quite literally under her belt. It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers.

But the appetite for new beginnings that brought me here doesn’t falter. It is only reinforced by the classical rendition of “Dancing Queen” that floods the room and the ghost of familiarity that reassures me that this new beginning does not and will not erase the past. After years spent at the top, it’s hard to start over. But surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become. In Taekwondo, we started each class reciting the tenets: honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet.

The thing about change is that it eventually stops making things so different. After nine different schools, four different countries, three different continents, fluency in Tamil, Norwegian, and English, there are more blurred lines than there are clear fragments. My life has not been a tactfully executed, gold medal-worthy Taekwondo form with each movement defined, nor has it been a series of frappés performed by a prima ballerina with each extension identical and precise, but thankfully it has been like the dynamics of a spinning back kick, fluid, and like my chances of landing a pirouette, unpredictable.

Why it works:

What’s especially powerful about this essay is that the author uses detailed imagery to convey a picture of what they’re experiencing, so much so that the reader is along for the ride. This works as a sports essay not only because of the language and sensory details, but also because the writer focuses on a specific moment in time, while at the same time exploring why Taekwondo is such an important part of their life.

After the emotional image is created, the student finishes their essay with valuable reflection. With the reflection, they show admissions officers that they are mature and self-aware. Self-awareness comes through with statements like “surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become” and maturity can be seen through the student’s discussion of values “honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet.” These are the kinds of comments that should find their way into a sports essay!

“Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one.

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we compete with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

In the beginning, you might think this is another cliche sports essay about overcoming adversity. But instead, it becomes a unique statement and coming-of-age tale that reads as a suspenseful narrative.

The author connects their experience with martial arts to larger themes in their life but manages to do so without riffing off of tried-and-true themes. Through statements like “I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was” we learn about the students values and their desire to be there for those who depend on them.

The student also brings it full circle, demonstrating their true transformation. By using the “Same, but Different” ending technique , the student places themself in the same environment that we saw in the intro, but experiences it differently due to their actions throughout the narrative. This is very compelling!

“1…2…3…4 pirouettes! New record!” My friends cheered as I landed my turns. Pleased with my progress, I gazed down at my worn-out pointe shoes. The sweltering blisters, numbing ice-baths, and draining late-night practices did not seem so bad after all. Next goal: five turns.

For as long as I can remember, ballet, in all its finesse and glamor, had kept me driven day to day. As a child, the lithe ballerinas, donning ethereal costumes as they floated across the stage, were my motivation. While others admired Messi and Adele, I idolized Carlos Acosta, principal dancer of the Royal Ballet.

As I devoted more time and energy towards my craft, I became obsessed with improving my technique. I would stretch for hours after class, forcing my leg one inch higher in an effort to mirror the Dance Magazine cover girls. I injured my feet and ruined pair after pair of pointe shoes, turning on wood, cement, and even grass to improve my balance as I spun. At competitions, the dancers with the 180-degree leg extensions, endless turns, and soaring leaps—the ones who received “Bravos!” from the roaring audience—further pushed me to refine my skills and perfect my form. I believed that, with enough determination, I would one day attain their level of perfection. Reaching the quadruple-pirouette milestone only intensified my desire to accomplish even more.

My efforts seemed to have come to fruition two summers ago when I was accepted to dance with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet at their renowned New York City summer intensive. I walked into my first session eager to learn from distinguished ballet masters and worldly dancers, already anticipating my improvement. Yet, as I danced alongside the accomplished ballerinas, I felt out of place. Despite their clean technique and professional training, they did not aim for glorious leg extensions or prodigious leaps. When they performed their turn combinations, most of them only executed two turns as I attempted four.

“Dancers, double-pirouettes only.”

Taken aback and confused, I wondered why our teacher expected so little from us. The other ballerinas seemed content, gracing the studio with their simple movements.

As I grew closer with my Moscow roommates, I gradually learned that their training emphasized the history of the art form instead of stylistic tricks. Rather than show off their physical ability, their performances aimed to convey a story, one that embodied the rich culture of ballet and captured both the legacy of the dancers before them and their own artistry. As I observed my friends more intently in repertoire class, I felt the pain of the grief-stricken white swan from Swan Lake, the sass of the flirtatious Kitri from Don Quijote, and I gradually saw what I had overlooked before. My definition of talent had been molded by crowd-pleasing elements—whirring pirouettes, gravity-defying leaps, and mind-blowing leg extensions. This mindset slowly stripped me from the roots of my passion and my personal connection with ballet.

With the Bolshoi, I learned to step back and explore the meaning behind each step and the people behind the scenes. Ballet carries history in its movements, from the societal values of the era to each choreographer’s unique flair. As I uncovered the messages behind each pirouette, kick, and jump, my appreciation for ballet grew beyond my obsession with raw athleticism and developed into a love for the art form’s emotive abilities in bridging the dancers with the audience. My journey as an artist has allowed me to see how technical execution is only the means to a greater understanding between dancer and spectator, between storyteller and listener. The elegance and complexity of ballet does not revolve around astonishing stunts but rather the evocative strength and artistry manifested in the dancer, in me. It is the combination of sentiments, history, tradition, and passion that has allowed ballet and its lessons of human connection to become my lifestyle both on and off stage.

This essay is about lessons. While the author is a dancer, this narrative isn’t really about ballet, per se — it’s about the author’s personal growth. It is purposefully reflective as the student shows a nice character arc that begins with an eager young ballerina and ends with a reflection on their past. The primary strength of this essay is the honesty and authenticity that the student approaches it with.

In the end, the student turns a cliche on its head as they embrace the idea of overcoming adversity and demonstrate how the adversity, in this case, was their own stereotypes about their art. It’s beautiful!

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite.

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin.

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

This essay uses the idea of sports to explore a more profound topic—growing through relationships. They really embrace using sports as an avenue to tell the reader about a specific experience that changed the way they approach the world.

The emphasis on relationships is why this essay works well and doesn’t fall into a cliche. The narrator grows not because of their experience with track but because of their relationship with their coach, who inspired them to evolve and become a leader.

Have a draft of your college essay? We’re here to help you polish it. Students can participate in a free Peer Review, or they can sign up for a paid review by CollegeVine’s experts. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to start improving your essay and your chances of acceptance!

Sample Short Answer Essay on Running

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The Common Application no longer requires a short answer essay from all applicants, but many colleges continue to include the short answer as part of a supplement. The short answer essay prompt typically states something like this:

"Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences ."

Colleges like this type of question because it gives their applicants the opportunity to identify an activity that is meaningful to them and to explain why it is meaningful. This information can be useful to colleges with holistic admissions as they try to identify students who will bring interesting skills and passions to the campus community.

Sample Short Answer Essay

Christie wrote the following sample short answer essay to elaborate upon her love of running:

It is the simplest of movements: right foot, left foot, right foot. It is the simplest of actions: run, relax, breathe. For me, running is both the most basic and the most complex activity I perform in any day. While my body adjusts to the challenges of gravel paths and steep inclines, my mind is free to drift, to sift through whatever needs sorting or disposing—the upcoming day's tasks, an argument with a friend, some nagging stress. As my calf muscles loosen and my breathing settles into its deep rhythm, I am able to release that stress, forget that argument, and set my mind in order. And at the midway point, two miles into the course, I stop at the hilltop vista overlooking my little town and the surrounding woodlands. For just a moment, I stop to listen to my own strong heartbeat. Then I run again.

Critique of the Short Answer Essay

The author has focused on a personal activity, running, not any history-making achievement, team triumph, world-changing social work, or even a formal extracurricular activity . As such, the short answer essay does not highlight any kind of remarkable accomplishment or personal talent.

But think about what this short answer essay does reveal; the author is someone who can find pleasure in the "simplest" of activities. She is someone who has found an effective way of dealing with stress and finding peace and equilibrium in her life. She reveals that she is in tune with her self and her small-town environment.

This one little paragraph gives us the impression that the author is a thoughtful, sensitive, and healthy person. In a short space, the essay reveals the maturity of the writer; she is reflective, articulate, and balanced. These are all dimensions of her character that will not come across in her lists of grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. They are also personal qualities that will be attractive to a college.

The writing is also solid. The prose is tight, clear, and stylistic without being over-written. The length is a perfect 823 characters and 148 words. This is a typical length limit for a short-answer essay. That said, if your college is asking for just 100 words or something longer, be sure to follow their instructions carefully.

Role of Essays and Your College Application

Keep in mind the role of any essays, even short ones, that you submit with your college application. You want to present a dimension of yourself that isn't readily apparent elsewhere in your application materials. Reveal some hidden interest, passion, or struggle that will give the admissions folks a more detailed portrait of yourself.

The college has asked for a short essay because it has holistic admissions ; in other words, the school tries to evaluate the whole applicant through both quantitative. A short answer essay gives the college a useful window into the applicant's interests.

Christie succeeds on this front. For both the writing and the content, she has written a winning short answer essay. You may want to explore another example of a good short answer on working at Burger King as well as learn lessons from a weak short answer on soccer and a weak short answer on entrepreneurship. In general, if you follow the advice on writing a winning short answer and avoid common short answer mistakes, your essay will strengthen your application and help make you an attractive candidate for admission.

Short Answer Response on Working at Burger King
Sample Short Answer on Soccer
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Short Answer Mistakes
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"Handiwork" - Sample Common Application Essay for Option #1
Sample Weak Supplemental Essay for Duke University
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Last updated May 31, 2023

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Blog > Common App , Essay Advice > How to Write a College Essay About Running

How to Write a College Essay About Running

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

If you love to run, you may be interested in writing your college essay about running. You’re not the only one.

Think about how many students are on a track or cross country team compared to, say, a basketball or volleyball team. A lot.

Since so many students find track or cross country to be a central part of their high school experiences, there is no shortage of running-related college essays.

Admissions officers read countless stories about make-or-break track meets, season-ending injuries, and thought-filled solo morning runs.

All this isn’t to say that you can’t write a standout college essay about running.

But the ones that are most effective come from students who find a genuine way to convey why they hold running so dearly.

We’ll lay out what specific topics you should avoid and give you a few questions to help you determine whether a college essay about running is the right choice for you.

Topics that college essays about running should avoid

Running for team captain.

Students who write essays about running for or being voted captain of their track or cross country teams are likely trying to show leadership and strong community involvement and support.

But the reality is that, unless done very tactfully, an essay about this topic isn’t likely to tell admissions officers any more than they already know from your activities section.

If you won the race, your leadership and excellence will be apparent just from the fact that you earned that position.

And if you lost, then chances are you have another story to tell that is more compelling.

Detailing the ins and outs of how you won or lost the captain position likely won’t add much more valuable information either.

Space in your application is precious. Use it wisely.

So unless you have an incredibly original or telling story about being captain, you’re probably better off using the story for a supplemental essay or choosing another topic altogether.

Overcoming an injury, losing a race, or wrestling with team dynamics

Students tend to choose these topics to discuss a pivotal moment in their lives. Their goal is often to show their admissions officers their work ethic, determination, or resilience.

While challenges like failure or team conflict seem like critical points in your life, the stakes usually aren’t that high or unique in the long run.

Your injury may have been devastating, but you’re hardly the first runner to be injured and unable to compete.

Plenty of other students have had to exhibit the same kind of character traits to overcome similar injuries.

While your college essay isn’t primarily about showing how unique you are, it is about showing your admissions officers something central to your background, values, or motivations.

Some students do have exceptional circumstances that can work with these topics, but essays on these typical kinds of setbacks tend to remain on the surface of who you are.

A college essay simply needs to do more than that.

Questions to ask yourself before writing a college essay about running

Now that the overused topics are out of the way, you may be left wondering whether you should still write your college essay about running.

The following questions should help you determine if this topic is the right choice for you.

They’ll also help you identify areas where running intersects with other important parts of your life, an approach that can be incredibly useful for writing a meaningful essay about running.

How has running shaped your sense of self or daily experience?

Thinking more specifically about the role running plays in your everyday life can sometimes be a helpful place to start.

After all, you run regularly because it serves a bigger purpose.

Since the most cliche essays about running tend to focus on participation in a track or cross country team, identifying how running impacts your life outside of your teams can encourage you to think about the deeper meaning it holds for you.

Example answer 1: My home life was chaotic. My daily run was my escape. With each mile I ran, I found more distance, literally and metaphorically, from the people who were holding me back.

Example answer 2: I have a condition that makes it hard for me to breathe. Running is a constant battle with my body, yet I do it anyway. Why?

How has running been part of your connection to a significant person or place?

Running can be a transformative individual and community sport as it gives you time and space to connect with the world around you.

For those who run with others, there can be intense camaraderie or emotions as you push yourselves side by side. And when you run outside, you’re also inherently connecting to place.

Think about how the relationships and values you hold closest developed from or are manifested through running.

Example answer 1: I’ve gone on nightly runs with my dad since I was ten. We’d talk as we ran. He’d tell me about the stars. I’d tell him what I learned in AP physics. We’d argue about the best way to get to Mars.

Example answer 2: My weekly run would take me through my local park. Over the years, I noticed the changes: increased litter, degrading play structures, fewer ducks. I used my story to advocate to city council for increased funding for park maintenance.

What meaning do you see in the details that make up the experience of running—your schedule, gear, bodily experience, etc.?

If most of your running experience has occurred as part of your school team, or if you still haven’t been able to find any significant connections to make, this final question may spark some new ideas.

Think specifically about the logistics of what it takes for you to run: when you go, where you go, who you go with, what you wear, how you feel, how long it takes, what parts you love and hate most.

By identifying salient details, you also begin to close in on what the actual experience of running looks like for you. Once you’ve got that figured out, you can begin to extrapolate deeper meaning.

Example answer 1: My track team got new uniforms that were supposed to make you faster, but I felt uncomfortable with how much of my body was exposed. I began researching and became fascinated with the differences between men’s and women’s athletic uniforms.

Example answer 2: I have nowhere in my neighborhood to run, so I decided to train for a marathon on a treadmill. Doing so taught me a lot about how to creatively confront obstacles.

The bottom line

Try this exercise. Excluding any tell-tale details, imagine that you hand your coach your essay to read. Now pretend that you ask them to guess which member of your team wrote it.

If your coach could read your essay and attribute your narrative and main takeaway to anybody else on your team, then your essay doesn’t tell admissions officers enough about you.

To write an effective college essay about running, you need to focus on the meaning you make through running rather than the running itself.

Concentrating on the meaning will encourage you to leave behind overused and cliche topics in favor of ones that communicate something that is authentically you.

Use caution when choosing running as your essay topic, and dig deep to find a theme that resonates with a core part of who you are or how you’ve experienced the world. It's all part of creating the perfect cohesive application narrative .

Liked that? Try this next.

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From Identity to Inspiration: A Reading List on Why We Run

“The Running Novelist” (Haruki Murakami, The New Yorker , June 2008)

Longtime fans of the Murakami Cinematic Universe will find familiar elements here: baseball, jazz, understated prose, and non sequiturs. For a time, before Murakami became a novelist, he was the owner of a jazz club in Tokyo. In this piece, he describes how — and exactly when — he decided to write and how his early habits and commitments allowed him to do so prolifically for decades.

Running a jazz club required constant physical labor, but when Murakami started to spend more time at his desk, he started gaining weight. “This couldn’t be good for me,” he writes in a deadpan statement. “If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to stay in shape.” Being metabolically challenged helped Murakami develop his work ethic.

Murakami drops writing advice while making parallel points about running. But the way he does it is frustratingly tantalizing — he’s not the one to share his tips openly à la Robert McKee. Murakami suggests that writing, like running, relies less on quick decision-making skills than patience and long contemplation: “Long-distance running suits my personality better, which may explain why I was able to incorporate it so smoothly into my daily life.”

Murakami calls himself a no-talent — a colossal understatement — but readers who have encountered unreliable narrators in his novels know better: We shouldn’t be so naïve as to take his words at face value.

Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins.

Murakami doesn’t debunk the myth of an artistic genius but shows that with a sustainable routine, the genius can be prolific. If you’re reading for concrete advice on writing and a neat analogy comparing running to writing, you won’t find it here. Rather, we get something better: a portrait of the artist as a young runner.

“Why I Run: On Thoreau and the Pleasures of Not Quite Knowing Where You’re Going” (Rachel Richardson, Literary Hub , October 2022)

Don’t let the title fool you. Rachel Richardson has no unconditional praise for Thoreau; she politely defies him. In his essay “Walking,” Thoreau spoke to an audience of men as he opined on nature. To him, women were symbols — “for the splay of land on which such a free man saunters,” writes Richardson — rather than his target readers.

To read Thoreau’s essay in 2023 is to be startled by his problematic view of women and puritanical sense of “capital-N” Nature. He would not approve of the urban environment that Richardson describes while she runs: “I was born in a California he didn’t imagine, in a hospital in a town laid out with lawns and gardens.” Her piece is a bracing tonic against the writer’s anachronistic thoughts.

Richardson, like many other runners like me, was not always a runner: “How or why anyone would do this for pleasure was beyond my ability to fathom,” she thought when growing up. But in her 20s, she discovered running as a refreshingly guilt-free activity to do in a world that made her anxious. (People who started running during the pandemic, like me, might agree. Unlike going to the gym or participating in a team sport, which were risky at the time, running was easier to navigate and do on our own.)

Richardson writes that she never knows what her running route will be. But that uncertainty brings relief. Freedom. Inspiration. Running rewards runners with a sense of uncomplicated happiness and goodwill, which Richardson details in this delightful passage:

When I run, I smile and people smile back. Kids wave at me and cyclists nod as they zoom by. Other runners raise a hand of hello or, my favorite, flash a big grin. Sometimes we’re wearing the same race shirt—me too!, I point. Sometimes they’re in a zone I can’t penetrate, with their earbuds and podcast or playlist keeping them company. I still smile, even when they don’t look up. Hey, we’re out here, doing this beautiful thing. When the endorphins start kicking in, around mile three, I love everybody, even the sourest-faced walker or most oblivious group of teenagers taking up the whole trail and dropping Doritos on the ground. Nice dog!, I shout when I see a dog happily panting at her runner’s side, or You’ve got this! to the struggling jogger stumbling to the end of his route. … I am an unrepentant dork when I run.

“To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I Had to Outrun My Past” (Nicholas Thompson, Wired , April 2020)

I have beef with running memoirs that try to overburden the sport with dramatic insights. Not because insights can’t be found in running, but because execution without sentimentality is no easy feat. Thompson’s essay — which deals with, among many things, family relationships, parental abuse and influence, sexuality, ambition, and mortality — is a clear-eyed piece that demonstrates what can be done in the hands of a dexterous editor and writer.

I’ve read this piece many times, and like a good novel, I’m drawn to different themes every time. In my most recent read, two ideas resonated: defining one’s identity separate from one’s parents’ and identifying with one’s masculinity without being poisoned by it. It’s an all-consuming narrative that spans four generations of men in Thompson’s family.

As he would later tell me, running was the rare sport where you mostly competed against yourself. You could learn without having to lose. It was also something he hadn’t failed at in front of his father.

I sent an early version of this essay to my older sister, who saw something clearly that I hadn’t identified yet. “Running solved nothing for [Dad]. You’ve had a longer journey with it, and used it in ways that are much more productive. But I have this nagging sense that your story of needing to follow footsteps (the schools, the running) and needing so much not to follow footsteps (the overindulgence, the flameout, the irresponsibility and failure) are more complexly interwoven.

“To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times , July 1999)

Whereas Murakami’s piece, detached from romanticism, was not a very effective sales pitch for running, Joyce Carol Oates’ ode to running may intrigue any writer who could use more literary imagination; she writes about running as a consciousness-expanding activity, allowing her to envision what she writes as a film or dream: “I’ve never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but as the attempted embodiment of a vision: a complex of emotions, raw experience.”

This piece was written more than 20 years ago. Oates, one of America’s most renowned storytellers, has published more than 70 books in her literary career. For her, running certainly seems to work.

The effort of memorable art is to evoke in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate to that effort. Running is a meditation; more practicably it allows me to scroll through, in my mind’s eye, the pages I’ve just written, proofreading for errors and improvements. My method is one of continuous revision. While writing a long novel, every day I loop back to earlier sections to rewrite, in order to maintain a consistent, fluid voice. When I write the final two or three chapters of a novel, I write them simultaneously with the rewriting of the opening, so that, ideally at least, the novel is like a river uniformly flowing, each passage concurrent with all the others.

Though I can’t claim the same level of inspiration, something similar happened when I first started running. During my daily runs, I experienced breakthroughs where I felt stuck: A connective sentence or a word I’d been looking for would pop into my head. On some days, this happened so often that I needed to stop every few minutes to record it on my phone, which disrupted my run. Eventually, I learned to run with a waterproof pocket notebook in my left hand and a retractable pen in my right.

“Running in the Age of Coronavirus” (Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated , May 2020)

The May 2020 timing of this piece on Jim Fixx, the “father of recreational running,” was wonderfully apt for pandemic-inspired runners. It was as if Chris Ballard, a seasoned sports writer, was inducting new runners into the history of the sport.

Ballard observed that more people started running during the pandemic, believing it “would in some way do them good, or make them feel better about themselves or the world, if even for a moment.” But the belief that running is good for your body and soul wasn’t always accepted wisdom but once an argument, even a radical and contrarian one.

It may sound glib to say that “running saved my life.” But for Fixx, it really did. And, in a tragic irony, it also killed him. Fixx was one of the central figures of the running boom of the ’70s and whose book, The Complete Book of Running , became “the most lucrative nonfiction title ever published by Random House,” writes Ballard. It was a hit, and the media couldn’t get enough of him. As Ballard writes, “a fad had become a craze,” and for the first time in a year, 100,000 Americans finished a marathon. The book was noteworthy not just because it was an encyclopedia of running; it heralded a certain kind of running memoir, one in which an author details their salvation by running.

Ballard writes both a pocket history guide on how running became a major sport in America and a personal history of the man who made it possible. Although this story has been told many times, Ballard’s reporting is enriched by Fixx’s journals, to which his family offered access for the first time.

After his death, the sports world changed profoundly. Running was no longer a craze, or a miracle cure. But neither did it die. Instead, it evolved. In 1977, 25,000 Americans finished marathons; By ’94, more than 300,000 did. In ’94, Oprah ran, and completed, her only marathon, spurring a boom among those who felt the feat previously unreachable. By the turn of the century, how you ran mattered as much as whether you did. Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run spurred thousands to tromp through the woods barefoot. Ultramarathons gained in popularity. Rock ’n’ roll marathon and fun run entered the lexicon. By 2011, women accounted for close to 60% of the finishers in half-marathons.

It’s not exactly a light read, so let me leave you with an irresistible detail: Fixx’s father was born a Fix but added a second x to his name. Why? He thought, “a person’s name ought to be a proper noun, not a verb.”

“What We Think About When We Run” (Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker , November 2015)

I couldn’t think of a better piece to wrap up this reading list than a meta-essay about writing on running by Kathryn Schulz who is, after all, a master of meta-writing. ( Her piece about Oxford’s “A Very Short Introduction” series is a good example.)

What do runners think about when they run? In the first part of this two-part story, Schulz looks to scientific research and lays out the uninspiring results. She writes: “Like a fair number of psychological studies, this one confirmed the obvious while simultaneously missing it.” But she continues:

Of course runners think about their route, their pace, their pain, and their environment. But what of everything else that routinely surfaces in the mind during a run? The new girlfriend, the professional dilemma, the batteries you need to remember to buy for the smoke detector, what to get your mom for her birthday, the brilliance with which Daveed Diggs plays Thomas Jefferson (if you are listening to the soundtrack to “Hamilton”), the music, the moment (if you are listening to Eminem), the Walter Mitty meanderings into alternate lives: all of this is strangely missing from Samson’s study. The British author Alan Sillitoe got it right in his 1958 short story “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”: “They can spy on us all day to see if we’re … doing our ‘athletics,’ but they can’t make an X-ray of our guts to find out what we’re telling ourselves.”

Then, Schulz points out, with a knowing wit, the shortcomings of contemporary writing on running. Writing about running without schmaltz — like Murakami — is no easy feat, which makes it hard for people to find books that “address the mind of the runner in descriptive rather than inspirational or aspirational terms.” You could also argue that Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run , despite being enjoyable, reads like gonzo journalism. And some running memoirs that read like redemption memoirs, such as Robin Harvie’s The Lure of Long Distances , follow the same formula.

Later, Schulz champions Poverty Creek Journal , a book by literary-critic-cum-runner Thomas Gardner, as “the only one to uncover the literary possibilities inside the terse, repetitive, normally unimaginative genre of the running log.” After reading this piece, I read this strangely profound book — it’s a mix of literary criticism, running logs, and thoughts that range from complaints to grief.

When Schulz says running logs are “terse, repetitive, normally unimaginative,” she doesn’t intend it as a criticism. Running is, admittedly, an incredibly understimulating sport to watch, so much so that I suspect even the most avid runners probably don’t sit down to watch the Boston Marathon from beginning to the end.

And here’s a pitfall of sports writing: There’s often too great a desire to imbue a grand meaning to the sport. “Life is a marathon,” goes the cliché. But the thing is, life is like a marathon. So writing about running becomes a balancing act, one in which — without sufficient craft and self-awareness — can be a challenge. But here, Schulz (and Gardner) masterfully explore the essence of running, in all its glory and tedium. A sport of contradiction indeed.

Sheon Han is a writer and programmer based in Palo Alto, California. His work has appeared in The New Yorker , The Atlantic , The New York Times Magazine , Quanta Magazine , and elsewhere. You can read his work at sheon.tk .

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Calculate for all schools

Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, need advice on writing a college essay about running.

Hey! I've been on my school's track and cross country team since freshman year, and it's really been a transformative experience for me. I want to share this journey in my college essay, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make it relatable and memorable. Any fellow runners out there who have written about their running experiences in essays? I'd appreciate any help!

Hello! It's great to hear that your running journey has been so transformative. In order to make your essay relatable and memorable, you'll want to avoid focusing on the common aspects like training, getting faster, and winning races. Instead, try to find a unique angle or narrow in on a specific experience that conveys a larger truth about yourself.

One approach is to explore how running taught you a valuable life lesson, such as discipline, resilience, or self-motivation. You could use an anecdote about overcoming a challenge or achieving a personal goal that had a significant impact on you.

For example, maybe you set a goal to break a certain time in the mile and made a plan to reach it, despite numerous setbacks. What strategies did you employ to reach that goal? What did you learn from that process? How did it change your approach to other aspects of your life?

Another idea is to discuss a connection you made through running that had a significant impact on you, such as a special friendship with a teammate, a mentoring relationship with a coach, or a unique experience during a race that resonated with you on a personal level. Delve into the details of that connection, how it helped you grow, and how it reflects your values or character.

Lastly, consider discussing running as a part of a bigger personal narrative. For instance, maybe running helped you cope with stress or manage a difficult situation in your life. In this case, you could intertwine the story of your running journey with the story of overcoming personal adversity, thereby showing how the two aspects of your life influenced and supported one another.

In the end, what matters most is conveying your growth, self-awareness, and personal qualities through the lens of your running experiences. Make it unique to you, and it'll be both relatable and memorable. Good luck with your essay!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Essays on Running

Faq about running.

Running in the First 5k Race Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Preparation for the race, running the 5k race, after the race; lessons learnt, reference list.

Athletics is a very popular sport since it stands distinctly from other sports like football, basketball, table tennis, hockey, golf or even swimming. It involves aspects like walking, jumping, and running in the form of cross-country running, race walking, road running, and track-and-field running. Athletics has become a resourceful sport in different countries due to the image it creates and the revenue earned from it.

Many have taken it as a profession and earn their living primarily from athletics, for example, the athletes, the athletic director, and other staff concerned with the running of athletic programs at different levels while others take it as a form of relaxation and physical exercise that helps to keep the body fit and healthy.

A 5k race is essential and gives runners especially those doing it for their first time a nice experience as it offers motivation and helps the runners enjoy all the aspects in the race and also enhances speed in future races. This paper discusses my experience in a 5k race from preparation, actual running, and even after the race giving the practical significance of the experience in my life in general.

Just like any other aspect of life, running requires preparation so as to make the exercise a success. Being my first 5k race, I had a lot of anxiety and needed a lot of training and preparation to make sure that I gave it my best and win in the competition. It was a relay and I had to be cooperative with my team members who were my workmates. Running requires some inner motivation and training since not everyone can run. It may be very intimidating especially for a person who is doing it for the first time due to the challenges associated with it, for example, fatigue and injuries.

Prior preparation is very essential to ensure that the body is used to the practice of running and one can therefore run comfortably. Two months prior to the actual exercise, I took the initiative of getting a medical clearance from my doctor to ensure that am fit to participate in the race without health complications since it is important to always maintain good health. I also had to identify the appropriate shoes for my foot type to ensure that I am comfortable when running and to avoid unnecessary injuries that could interfere with the process of running.

This is done by visiting experts in the running field who stock sports shoes, giving the right information after which the appropriate shoes are provided. Warm-ups are very essential for example walking for some minutes prior to running. During my first week of practice, I had three sessions of walking for 6 minutes and jogging for 1 minute and three sessions of 5minutes walking and 2minutes jogging; week three involved four sessions of walking for 3 minutes and jogging for 4 minutes, and walking for 2 minutes and jogging for 5 minutes four times during the fourth week.

During the fifth week, I had four sessions three times, 2 minutes walking and 5 minutes jogging while I walked for 2 minutes and jogged for 9 minutes thrice on the sixth week. I had four sessions of walking for 1 minute and jogging for 11 minutes thrice during my seventh week. It was after the practice that I could now be able to run for twenty minutes at the beginning of the eighth week and thirty consecutive minutes towards the end of the week. I continued doing this four times a week and realized that things were becoming easier and that my endurance and fitness improved day after day making me more suited for the 5k race.

The training part of the running process helped me so much as my body was now used to and I had the stamina and fitness it takes to run the 5k race. I ran the 5k in a relay with other four workmates. Having done the training together although with some discrepancies in approaches due to our differences in strength and determination, we were able to take the third position and we were not happy about the results bearing in mind that we had the chance of becoming the winner. It was after the race that we learned that we could have adhered to some of the tips that aid in proper running, for example, looking ahead while running to ensure safety, avoiding landing on the toes or heels but landing on the midfoot, keeping hands at waist level and relaxing them, maintaining the right posture, avoiding too much bouncing that uses a lot of energy and keeping the shoulders in a relaxed state (Herreros, 2003).

After the race, there were different views on what happened and everyone tried to evaluate why we performed that way. At some point, it was viewed as a good attempt as it was our first time but to some people being the first time did not justify the poor performance. I learned that preparation especially for the first timers is the most crucial part of the running process and should therefore be taken very seriously as it determines the success or failure of the activity. It is not good to ignore the simple things involved in the preparation and training as it is their combination that brings the end result. Rest is essential since it enhances recovery and helps prevent injuries through muscle building and repair. A comfortable pace is also recommended as long as the targeted mileage is covered to avoid straining of the body muscles. Other exercises apart from running and jogging for instance swimming are vital to reduce monotony while at the same time relaxing the body.

It is also advisable to warm up before running and cool down after running. I also learned that a run-walk method of preparation is good to start with as beginners usually do not have the stamina to run throughout without breaks and to increase running time gradually while reducing the walking time. Controlling the breathing while running is essential and one should make sure the breathing is not heavy and can allow talking while running. It is important to reduce the workload of training a week before the actual race so as to increase the peak by loosening the legs for the race day.

Resting and stretching the body muscles the day before race is crucial and drinking plenty of water on the day before the race and after the race is good to avoid dehydration of the body. One should wear the appropriate shoes, pay attention to pains in the body to sense signs of adverse injury and wear right clothing, not too much or too little for the weather to ensure one is comfortable and not in danger of developing weather related illness. One should also train moderately and avoid being overconfident and bear in mind that the competitors have also undergone some training (Earl, 2005).

In every aspect of life, it is important to pay attention to all issues however simple they may seem to be. Preparation is essential in any activity as the effort put in determines the result. Teamwork is a good skill to be adopted as it is through the combination of ideas and efforts that overall success is achieved, for instance, if all my team members had proper training, we would have been able to secure a second or even the first position.

It is evident that there has been an increased interest and participation in athletics and sports. Athletics has become the most attractive activity because of its simplicity nature and use of inexpensive equipment among other factors. The 5k offers a good chance for the beginners and tests the speed and strength of runners that have been in existence so it should never be under-emphasized. It has also proved to be essential in building the speed for long-distance runners. It emphasizes on the need to balance mileage and speed in running and the importance of adequate training that ensures that the runners’ bodies adapt well to the strenuous exercise of running and in the long run perform well.

Earl, W.F. (2005). The Complete Guide to Running: How to Be a Champion from 9 to 90. New York: Meyer & Meyer Verlag.

Herreros, M. (2003). Running in Florida: A Practical Guide for Runners in the Sunshine State . New York: Pineapple Press Inc.

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I notice the words right away. They float against the beige brick wall. I’m struck by the specificity of the phrase and the way it rolls off my tongue: “Fatigue Detection Capability . ”

Nineteen miles into a 23-mile run, I ducked into Industrial Engineering Building II for water. Blinking away rings of light, struggling to acclimate my eyes to the dimly lit corridor, I bend toward the drinking fountain.The cold water drips down my chin. My calves twitch, knotting into fists right below my knees. I stop drinking to reach for my toes but get my palms only halfway down my shins before I give up. I snap upright again and head toward the wooden door labeled “Ladies.”

I stand in front of the sink for a moment, looking at the mirror. My face is pallid; my lips, slightly purple. Salt speckles my forehead just below my hairline. Bloodshot veins line my retina. I pull a paper towel from the metal dispenser and wipe stinging sweat from the edges of my pupils and look up again. My eyes are even redder now, and the skin that surrounds them is puffy from the abrasive surface of the paper. I crumple the towel, tossing it in the wastebasket, and walk back out into the hallway, letting the door swing closed behind me.

There are 26 bones, 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments in the foot. When I began working at the New Balance store in high school, my manager, Daren, taught me about them.

He pushed a skeleton model of the foot toward me. “Can you name any of the bones?”

I leaned against the counter near the register. I ran my fingers along the tiny pieces that made up the toes, and I worked my way up the longer bones. “Metatarsals.”

“Good. Any more?”

I wove my hands through the spaces between the bones, making the foot dance on the table, then set it down and looked back at him.

He picked up the foot, pointed to the bone right above the metatarsals. “Cuboid.”

He moved up the foot. “Navicular, Calcanium, Talus.”

I glanced up. “It’s incredible that people don’t break bones in their feet all the time.”

He set the foot down and looked at me.

I picked it up and pointed to the phalanges. “They’re so little.”

And so I became fascinated with my own feet.

My toes are unusually flexible from barefoot runs with my brother several summers ago. We read about the Tarahumara Indians running hundreds of miles nearly barefoot, drawing strength from the well-developed muscles in their feet. Long before Time magazine and ABC began covering the “barefoot running trend,” my brother and I finished every seven- or eight-mile run with a one- or two-mile run barefoot in the grass.We felt the wetness of the morning dew and the prickle of the grass on our naked skin.We bounced from toe to heel, aware of how our feet were hitting the ground.When I returned to school in the fall and slipped off my shoes to do strides at the end of practice, however, my cross-country coach shook his head, listing things I could step on. “We can’t have any injuries this season.”

In 11 years of running cross-country and track, I have never broken a bone in my foot.

I’ve had only one real stress fracture—in my shin during high school. It showed up,

barely, as a gray, grainy line on a bone scan and kept me on crutches and out of track practice for six weeks. Instead of running, I swam at the William Costick Activities Center, leaving my crutches stacked at the side of the pool. I treaded water every day for more than an hour, spitting up streams of chlorine and struggling to breathe as elderly woman in bathing caps floated on foam noodles around me.

When I was in middle school, before I began running competitively, my parents used to freeze the backyard for ice skating during the winter. They covered the lawn with a blue tarp and built up plywood boards to contain the water.

I liked to go outside to skate at night when my homework was finished. I would steady my ankles and knees and begin to circle.The skates skimmed over the rough patches in the ice. The cold nipped at my face, and condensation gathered around the mouth of my neck gaiter. Straightaway. Turn. Straightaway. Turn. After a while, my legs knew where to turn without my even looking.

As I orbited inside the boards, picking up speed, I thought about school: About how Trevor Flood got a better grade on a paper than I did even though he wrote it the class period before, about a joke Russell Wentworth made on the bus about how blondes with pigtails were blowjobs with handles, about the way Mr. Sutherland made us put our heads down in class then singled me out in front of everyone for being insincere about the gesture.

I thought about my great uncle dying in his bathtub and not being found for a week. I thought about my grandfather—about cancer, paper-thin skin and hands that seemed as if they would break when they touched me.

I thought until all that remained was the ice and the dark and the way my skates moved along the surface. I skated until I was broken, until my legs and my mind couldn’t do anything else.Then I would sprint across the middle of the rink and slide down onto the ice, landing on the side of my legs. I would lie on the ice, watching my breath cloud up in the cold air, looking up at the sky until the water soaked through my jeans and onto my skin.

Running is about breaking and rebuilding.

My current marathon training is divided into phases: building for three weeks and cutting back for one, tearing the body up and then letting it rest, recover, reconstruct itself. Within each week, too, my workouts are spaced out:

Monday: 11 miles with six miles at goal marathon pace. Tuesday: six miles, easy pace. Wednesday: 10 miles with four miles at 10,000-meter race pace around a track. Thursday: six miles, easy pace. Friday: 22 miles with the last four miles faster than goal marathon pace. Saturday: six miles, easy pace. Sunday: Off.

Once, I tried to cram all my hard workouts into the beginning of the week. My legs felt sluggish and heavy. I shuffled along, barely able to pick up my feet. When I got home from the second hard day, I sat with my legs stretched out on the floor and my back propped against the couch for almost an hour. My black-and-white spotted dog roused from the beige cushion where he had been sleeping to lick the salt off my legs. He nudged my shoulder with his nose, trying to coax me into movement.

In college, my cross-country coach attended to the science of running cycles. I sat cross-legged on a yellow foam wrestling mat and listened to Coach Straubel explain the purpose of each workout. He came to practice dressed in his law professor clothing—khakis, button-up shirts and vests. He passed out articles about training phases and, in a soft but confident voice, specified what each workout accomplished on a cellular level: blood lactate level, muscle fibers, capillarization.

When my legs ache after a track workout, I visualize them tearing and rebuilding. I picture the tiny muscle fibers popping like the looped surface of Velcro. I imagine them reattaching in cobwebs of connective tissue. When I get more than an hour and a half into a run, I imagine new capillaries lighting their way down my legs, like Christmas bulbs being plugged into a tree, illuminating new passageways for oxygen.

When I began running, I loved cross-country. I liked leaning over the starting line, watching my breath hang in the fall air, with my finger on my watch, waiting for the gun. I liked being one of hundreds of girls stampeding across a field.

In college, we ran workouts on a trail behind the intramural Frisbee field. My legs grew used to the uphills, the downhills, the curves. I memorized the spots where roots made the footing uneven and the places where the grass and dirt were matted down and made it possible to pick up speed. I knew the course the way I know the calluses on my feet or the freckles on my arm.

Once, when I was in high school, a doe got caught in front of the runners near the starting line at a race. The gun went off, and we ran down a hill, into the valley where she was grazing. She froze for a moment and then raised her white tail, ready to dart away. Her legs were thin and seemed unsteady as she wavered back in forth in front of the herd of bodies. She ran among us then wriggled away.

My brother, Keith, was chased by wolves while he was running up north. He saw them coming at him from a distance as he ran down Indian Trail, a dirt road that weaves between cornfields. He said they were just blurs of black against the white snow at first. Then they began to congregate and run toward him. He told me he bent down, searching for something to defend himself with, and found a gnarled branch lying on the shoulder of the road, coming out of a ditch. He picked up the stick and held it up, sprinting as fast as he could toward the highway. He didn’t look back, and he didn’t slow down, and he kept the branch raised above his head, trying to make himself look as big as possible.

Keith isn’t the only person I know who has been chased by wolves while running there. I’ve been running a road race up north every Fourth of July since I was 10. For the past 11 years, one other girl has served as my main age-group competitor. She has a long, sandy brown ponytail, which straggles down her back. Her skin is tanned from working outside, and her limbs are hearty and muscular. She runs barefoot, and thick brown calluses cover her feet. She was barefoot, running in a white cotton T-shirt on a hot summer day on the shoulder of Indian Trail, when the wolves approached her.

A wolf, as tall as her waist, came up on her left side, meeting her stride for stride. Unsure of what to do, she kept running, maintaining her pace, trying not to reveal her fear in the weight of her breath or the rhythm of her tread. Several moments later, another wolf came up on her right side. The trio ran down the road, their legs moving cohesively in the same motion—left, right, left, right, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. After about a half-mile, she said, the wolves fell off, diverging into the woods, leaving her to finish her run.

My friend Kyle, a forestry major at University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, told me that wolves like to practice their pursuit, honing their hunting techniques, like children playing house. “What saved her was that she didn’t look weak, she didn’t react, she kept her stride, and eventually they lost interest.”

I think about her running beside them, and I try to imagine matching the strides of the wolves, momentarily becoming part of the pack and part of their play.

For a long time, I didn’t like track as much as cross-country. On the track, I was uncomfortably aware of my body. I struggled to keep up. I heard my breathing begin to falter and fall out of rhythm. I got claustrophobic in the pack of bodies corralled into the first two lanes. I slowed down, fell back and then sprinted to keep up, clipping the heels of the girls in front of me.

It took a long time to learn to relax the muscles in my back. It took even longer to learn how to ease my breath into a smooth pattern when it began to falter. I learned how to forget how far I was going and to focus on reeling in small checkpoints—a line, a cone, a pole. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything beyond that blurred stream of motion. Turn. Straightaway. Turn. Straightaway.

I began to love track when I learned to become almost predatory about staying focused on someone’s shoulder and not letting it go with my eyes or my body, reeling her in like one of my checkpoints. I learned to love the way I could block out everything but the chase, the rhythm of the track, the sound of my feet.

In the hallway, I search for the information about improved fatigue detection capability. My palms drag along the brick and then wander over a bulletin board with a checkerboard of aerospace engineering posters with blue marbled backgrounds. They look like slides from a PowerPoint presentation, blown-up and laminated as wall decor. About six posters in, “Improved Fatigue Detection Capability with Vibrothermography” is written in big, orange Ariel font: Societal Need: Metal Fatigue Limits the Lives of Many Structural Components—the vibration of these components leads to heat degeneration of the cracked surface.

I imagine a metal skyscraper, its shiny skin cracking like eggshell, ready to collapse when shaken too hard. I wonder how detecting the fatigue using Vibrothermography will help engineers make structures stronger.

When life falls apart, I turn to the track. I turn to physicality. I turn to the science of recovery and the reliability of numbers. Weekly mileage, split times, personal records. A month ago, when I moved to Ames, after my parents and my brother

backed their Jeep out of the driveway, I went running. I looked for the cross-country course. The next day, I found the track.The city was strange, but the fluttering nervousness before I hit the start button on my watch, the 45-second, 200-meter checkpoint and the rush of lactic acid felt familiar.

Now I’m in the final phase of training for my first marathon—one month away from the race. I’m training for the first time without a team and without a coach. Physically, I’m broken. My legs are heavy.They lack the sharp bounciness

I equate with being race-ready. I remember the times when I’ve been unable to trust my own structural integrity and had to rely on crutches and braces. I think about the ways I’ve broken my body on purpose—with sprint repeats and long runs that segue into long naps, when I collapse after a shower into bed to recover and rebuild. I don’t know if I’ve been able to detect fully my own fatigue or if I’ve pushed too hard, blocking out the tiredness the way I learned to block out everything else on the track. In two weeks, I’ll begin cutting back, halving my mileage and stopping my speed work. I hope my body will repair the damage I’ve done.

I turn toward the door, standing for a second in the air-conditioned entryway before stepping back out into the afternoon sun. My stomach sloshes with the water I drank, and my legs are heavier from stopping. I walk a few steps forward on the sidewalk then begin to run again.

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I'm writing my college application essay about running, do you guys have any ideas to get me started?

Sorry if this isn't the right place, but I figured I might be able to get some help from here.

The essay prompt is about something that's meaningful to you, and since running is extremely meaningful to me, I figure I'd write my essay about it.

However, there's so many aspects of running that I enjoy: from the ultra competitive, to the meditative, to the friendships that stem from it--I'm really, really not sure where to start.

Do you think you guys could help me find somewhere to start or some topics to touch on? What are some things about running that have basically defined the sport for you? Any tips would be awesome!

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Descriptive Essay about Running a Marathon

Essays about sports are not that hard to write, especially when they are related to your personal experience. Or does it just look this way? The problem with personal experience based essays is that a student thinks that it is enough just to tell the story and completely forgets about the structure, logic of narration and, sometimes, even grammar. Help here can be found from term paper writers .

When choosing a sports major, many students mistakenly think they won’t have to write essays anymore. Though there are not too many of those, students still end asking themselves who can do my essay fast and cheap . But, essays about sports are not that hard to write, especially when they are related to your personal experience. Or does it just look this way? The problem with personal experience based essays is that a student thinks that it is enough just to tell the story and completely forgets about the structure, logic of narration and, sometimes, even grammar.

To get you closer to the idea of a successful sports essay, we’ve asked experts from a professional essay writing company Smart Writing Service to share a sample of a descriptive essay about running a marathon.

My first marathon: lessons, fails, a victory

The idea of running a marathon wasn’t too bold and unexpected for me. I’ve already finished two half-marathons the previous year, and though it was quite a challenge, I can’t say I didn’t struggle for more. I was planning to finish a marathon in less than 4 hours, which is a good time for someone like me. Those two half-marathons I ran almost without specific preparation—I run for fun, and I am active in the gym, but I didn’t use specific programs. This time I’ve decided that it is time to get closer to “professional amateur” runners.

Preparation phase

Though most of my friends use Nike or Strava apps to track running activity and create individual programs, I have chosen an application offered by Asics. Asics is not that fancy, but fully functional and free, which was a valuable factor me. I have created a four-month training plan with four running exercises each week. When I’ve seen a program, I have realized what I was doing wrong before. Running activity I had before was based on “pure running” — 5km, 10 km, the more, the better. Here I’ve realized that I need to have one long training week, with a moderate pace, one training to increase my speed, I test run, close by speed to what I want to achieve, and one “strength running workout.” And so I’ve started.

My training plan happened to be truly useful, though I should admit that I’ve not been diligent enough with what is called strength running workouts. They don’t feel like running, and it is rather irritating. It was a mistake, because, as practice proves, weak legs can’t run long enough. Looking ahead, I should admit that I’ve finished the marathon, but I will pay more attention to these apps in the future.

Starting shot. The first 10 km I run on the pulse up to 155, I am surprised to see that I run 5 min/km, which is pretty fast for me. I feel that I can add more, but I’m afraid of scary stories about hitting the wall. After 10km I eat a tube of gel. 10-20 km I’m just running in euphoria, the pulse is up to 155, the speed is still 5-5.30, nothing hurts. I eat two gels every 30 minutes. 20-30 km aching sensations in the legs begin to appear. I start being anxious. At the same time, I see that for the first 20 km, I created a normal reserve for myself in time, I ran about 5.30, although for some reason my heart rate drops to 150-152. I start adding gel every 20 min.

After 30 km, the legs become wooden. They begin to feel cracks and bumps on the pavement, which I had not noticed before. But it is at this moment that the strongest emotion comes—I’m sure that I will do a marathon! I will endure, no matter what! The only thing—I’m still afraid that my legs will fail after 35 km and follow the pace, although I try not to fall below 6 minutes. The pulse sometimes starts to go below 150. As planned, I plan to add speed after 35 km, then after 37, then after 40, but the closer the finish is, the less my desire to accelerate is.

Three hundred meters before the finish, I’m doing the finishing spurt! I probably could have done it earlier, but the finish itself was not visible, so I couldn’t plan it good enough. At the finish, I grab a medal and try to enjoy the sensation of a great deed. However, the delight at 30 km was still stronger, as it was not drowned out by the pain in my legs and an overwhelming terrible cold.

I’ve made a terrible mistake not paying enough attention to strength exercises, and if my finances allow it, I would like to work with a trainer for my next marathon. However, I can say that my decision to take part in this run made me feel very proud of myself, and now I can have bigger goals—both in sports, education, and my future career.

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Harris picks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for running mate

Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate, according to three sources with knowledge of the pick, adding a popular Midwestern state executive to the Democratic ticket as the party gears up to hold onto key Northern battleground states this fall.

In picking Walz, who’s in his second term and also served 12 years in Congress, Harris will have as her No. 2 someone with a proven record of winning over white working-class voters in Rust Belt states while also boasting a robustly progressive record .

Democrats will hope that mix of attributes helps a Harris-Walz ticket shore up support in the onetime “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — longtime Democratic strongholds at the presidential level that Donald Trump flipped in 2016 and Joe Biden flipped back in 2020. This year, they’ve been seen as Biden’s, and now Harris’, most viable path to victory.

Walz, 60, had initially been viewed as a long shot in a field of vice presidential contenders that included rising party stars, some of whom have been mentioned as future presidential candidates, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Now Harris has chosen a governing partner who has leaned in at times to a folksy, Midwestern reputation while also proving to be a reliable attack dog against Trump.

Walz’s experiences earlier in his life, as a public school teacher and a member of the Army National Guard, could also buttress his ability to speak to different voting blocs — including veterans and organized labor — that Harris will need to win in November.

Walz, a Nebraska native, enlisted in the National Guard when he was 17 and served for more than two decades, with both domestic and overseas deployments. He later was a high school social studies teacher and football coach in Mankato, about 80 miles south of Minneapolis, before he won a congressional seat in a largely rural and agricultural district in 2006.

He represented Minnesota’s 1st District for 12 years before his successful run for governor in 2018. A 1995 reckless driving arrest in Nebraska, during which, an officer said, Walz had failed a sobriety test, came up in his campaigns for House and the governorship, but he was elected anyway. Walz called it a “gut check moment” in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2018, saying he stopped drinking afterward.

Walz’s allies have spoken frequently about how his background representing rural communities is much needed in the party, noting that he won re-election in a red-trending district — one that was about evenly divided in 2012 but swung heavily to Trump in 2016 — and could help Democrats compete for some moderate or conservative voters skeptical of Trump this time around.

Walz also had the most Capitol Hill experience of anyone on Harris’ reported short list, with relationships in Congress that could help a new president move a legislative agenda .

As governor, Walz has overseen a bonanza of progressive policy accomplishments — particularly during his second term, during which Democrats have also controlled both chambers of the Legislature.

He has signed laws protecting abortion rights , legalizing recreational marijuana , restricting gun access and providing legal refuge to trans youths whose access to gender-affirming and other medical care has been restricted elsewhere. Progressives elsewhere have pointed to Minnesota as a case study in how to effectively use the power of a legislative trifecta to achieve policy priorities.

Walz also enacted laws expanding paid family leave , banning most non-compete agreements , providing universal school meals for students and capping the price of insulin in Minnesota (three years before Biden did it nationally) — a list of legislative wins his colleagues and supporters have said would translate nationally.

Walz doesn’t have the same degree of name recognition as many of his presumed competitors to be Harris’ running mate, though he spent a year leading fundraising efforts for Democratic governors as chair of the Democratic Governors Association. In recent days, Walz has turned up the publicity dial, trying out attack lines against Trump and Sen. JD Vance in a slew of media appearances.

In a late July interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he ripped Trump and Vance as “weird,” gaining wider notice. Harris herself began using the “weird” line almost immediately.

Walz also explicitly used his media appearances to attack the GOP ticket by playing up his strong cultural ties to the middle of the country — and to demonstrate to Democrats how he would intend for the party to win over those voters.

“What I know is that people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America,” Walz said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on July 23. “My town had 400 people, 24 kids in my graduating class, 12 were cousins. And he gets it all wrong.”

“It’s not about hate. It’s not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business,” Walz said, adding that Republican “policies are what destroyed rural America. They divided us. They’re in our exam rooms. They’re telling us what books to read.”

“And what I think what Kamala Harris knows is bringing people together around the shared values, strong public schools, strong labor unions that create the middle class, health care that’s affordable and accessible, those are the things,” Walz said.

Picking Walz doesn’t come without risks. While his selection underscores Democrats’ effort to aggressively go after Midwestern voters, he doesn’t bring a specific battleground state advantage: Minnesota hasn’t gone red in a presidential race since 1972.

In addition, as Walz’s stock has risen in recent days, critics have reintroduced questions about his governing record. They include concerns over a delay calling in the National Guard as protests engulfed Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by city police officers in May 2020, as well as the fact that the biggest pandemic fraud case in the U.S. happened under his watch.

Another presumed liability for Walz’s VP chances early on had been his role as a co-chair of the Democratic National Convention rules committee — a job that, in the chaotic days after Biden dropped out of the race, led him to help Harris quickly become the party’s presumptive nominee.

Any potential criticism over a conflict of interest was largely rendered moot when precisely zero high-profile competitors challenged Harris for the nomination.

Walz told reporters that “anybody [who] wants to put their name in” to be nominated” can do so.

Adam Edelman is a political reporter for NBC News.

Monica Alba is a political reporter for NBC News.

Yamiche Alcindor is an NBC News Washington correspondent.

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Is ‘founder mode’ or ‘manager mode’ better? Here’s what the 22 Fortune 500 companies still run by founders show

Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, has stirred up Silicon Valley with his embrace of “founder mode.”

The buzziest buzz term in the tech world is suddenly “founder mode,” coined only days ago and fast propagating into business worldwide. Founder mode is a way of running a company—the way a founder would run it—as distinct from manager mode, the way it would be run by “merely a professional manager.” So says Paul Graham, a cofounder of the Y Combinator startup accelerator, who originated the terms in a recent essay . He disdains manager mode and finds founder mode far superior. So—is it?

Graham is well positioned to judge. Over the past 19 years, Y Combinator has helped to birth thousands of companies including Airbnb , DoorDash , Reddit, and Stripe . He was inspired to identify two modes of managing after hearing a recent speech by Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky, who described his awful experience bringing in outside managers. The speech struck a chord with other founders in the audience. Graham’s distillation of their views:

“Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it’s described that way, doesn’t it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.”

Not a warm vote of confidence in outsider MBAs. To see if such scorn is justified, let’s look at some data.

Founder mode vs. manager mode

The Fortune 500 includes 22 companies that are run by their founders (list below). We calculated each company’s performance during its current founder-CEO’s tenure and compared it with the performance of the rest of the 500 over that same time span. We measured performance by cumulative return, which includes stock price performance and dividends.

Result: a blowout in favor of the founder-CEOs. Specifically:

· Cumulative total return during the founder-CEOs’ tenures —The founder-CEOs’ companies delivered a median of 1,129% vs. 57% for the rest of the 500.

· Performance vs. the S&P 500 (a performance score of 100 equals the market) —The median return of the founder-CEO companies was a performance score of 202, while the median of the rest of the Fortune 500 was 92.

· Performance vs. the sector (a performance score of 100 equals the sector) —The founder-CEO companies delivered a median performance score of 656.

The superiority of the founder-CEOs is breathtaking. But if we used this data to declare that founder mode beats manager mode, the world’s statisticians would have us arrested for the crime of survivor bias. Those 22 founder-CEO companies are a tiny fraction of the many thousands of startups launched over the same time periods, and we don’t have data on how each was managed. For starters, what percentage of startups crashed and burned under outsider managers versus what percentage crashed and burned under the founders? We would like to know that and much more.

Still, we know at least two relevant facts. First, we know that the forces determining who runs a growing startup have been well studied and explained. Noam Wasserman, dean of Yeshiva University’s business school, was on the faculty of Harvard Business School when he studied thousands of startups and wrote The Founder’s Dilemmas . It describes in detail how entrepreneurs balance conflicting personal preferences that influence who—a founder or outsider—runs the business. In response to Graham’s distaste for outsider managers, he tells Fortune : “Founders who were great for the early stages, but do not have what it takes for the often very different next stage of company development, may instead be the ones who ‘drive the company into the ground.’”

Second, we know that on average, the few founder-run companies that make it to the Fortune 500 are formidably great performers, and we should know more about how they joined that exclusive club. Graham wrote in his essay, “There are as far as I know no books specifically about founder mode. Business schools don’t know it exists … But now that we know what we’re looking for, we can search for it. I hope in a few years founder mode will be as well understood as manager mode.”

That’s a worthy goal. Founder mode should absolutely be studied and taught, not because outside managers are necessarily toxic, but because the research can make available to others the lessons learned by those rare founders—Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang—who managed their companies from nothing to greatness.

Founder CEOs in the 2024 Fortune 500

Company

Airbnb/Brian Chesky

Apollo Global Management/Marc Rowan

BlackRock/Laurence D. Fink

Blackstone/Stephen Schwarzman

Block/Jack Dorsey

Capital One Financial/Richard Fairbank

Carvana/Ernest C. Garcia III

Coupang/Bom Kim

Dell Technologies/Michael Dell

DoorDash/Tony Xu

Intercontinental Exchange/Jeffrey Sprecher

Meta Platforms /Mark Zuckerberg

Nvidia/Jensen Huang

Prologis/Hamid R. Moghadam

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals/Leonard S. Schleifer

Salesforce/Marc Benioff

Sanmina/Jure Sola

Skechers U.S.A./Robert Greenberg

Steel Dynamics/Mark D. Millett

Super Micro Computer/Charles Liang

Tesla/Elon Musk

Wayfair/Niraj S. Shah

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From Identity to Inspiration: A Reading List on Why We Run

“The Running Novelist” (Haruki Murakami, The New Yorker , June 2008)

“Why I Run: On Thoreau and the Pleasures of Not Quite Knowing Where You’re Going” (Rachel Richardson, Literary Hub , October 2022)

“To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I Had to Outrun My Past” (Nicholas Thompson, Wired , April 2020)

“To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times , July 1999)

“Running in the Age of Coronavirus” (Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated , May 2020)

“What We Think About When We Run” (Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker , November 2015)

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