Winter and Track

Track season starts in the middle of February so the weather is normally still cold and there is sometimes still snow on the ground. Having cold and snowy weather can ruin the start of your track season. This year we have had a really cold winter and so we will probably have a very slow start to track season because track starts on February 17^th which is less than three weeks away so I don’t think the cold, snowy weather will be clearing up any time soon.

When the weather is cold and snowy at the beginning of the season it doesn’t affect the teams who can practice on indoor tracks but for the teams who don’t have that opportunity it can make running very difficult. My track team does not have the opportunity to run on an indoor track so when there is snow on the ground we normally run in the schools parking lot because the snow is normally shoveled in the parking lot and it isn’t shoveled on our track and when it is too cold to go outside my team is forced to have track practice inside.

There are not very many places to run inside a school except for the gym. My school has two gyms one of the gyms is much smaller than the other. Because we are the girls track team and normally have less team members than the boys track team, the girls track team is normally forced to squeeze into the small gym while the boys get to use the big gym. The small space in the gym makes it very difficult to accomplish any quality running.

Winter weather at the beginning of the season makes practice very difficult, especially for the long distance runners because we are forced to run in the small gym or in the parking lot and it is harder to accomplish more things at practice if you don’t have the appropriate places to run. Because it is more difficult to practice for track in the winter it makes for a slow start to the season and it takes longer for the track athletes to get in shape.

The winter weather doesn’t only affect track practices, it also affects track meets. When it is snowing and cold, a lot of track meets will be cancelled because they are outdoors and it is hard to make up the track meets because once it is warm you already have a lot of track meets in your schedule. When a lot of your meets are cancelled early in the season it is also harder to qualify for drake relays because there aren’t many meets that you can participate in to try to run a good time and if you do have an opportunity to qualify for drake it will be harder to qualify because you aren’t in shape form the slow start to your season from practicing indoors while the teams that have had the opportunity to run on an indoor track are in better shape than those who don’t have that opportunity like my track team. I hope that the weather warms up soon so we don’t have to have a slow start to our track season and get to run all of our meets.

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