Cross Country is Better than Track

Hello VenomousNinja. I would first like to mention a few assumptions that I have that you may clarify. 1. "Cross country is better than track" Based on your very "simple" context and fortified with the word is, I am going to assume that you believe cross country is always better than track. 2. "physical limit" I am going to assume that you mean that a person has only physically exerted themselves to the point where one couldn't have done any better. 3. "Allows kids to get more exercise." I am going to assume that you mean calorie consumption. 4. I am going to assume since you used the term kids we are talking about a middle school to high school age range. My arguement: 1. One's physical build affects the amount of miles that should be run. For instance, if you look at most cross country runners the are usually very lean. Why is this? Obviously the exercise burns fat, but more importantly cross country runners have more white celled muscle than red cell. White cell muscle is used for endurance and red celled muscle is used for anarobic actions. White cell muscle doesn't take up near the volume of red cell muscle. The amount of either is limited by your genes. My point is that someone who is genitically programed to have a high ratio of red cell muscle to white cell muscle is going to hurt himself running cross country. The top two physical traits good cross country runners have are: 1. Their lung capacity and ability to take in oxygen. 2. The amount of white cell muscle they can have. I have a friend who has tremendous lungs, but is built like a football player. He attempted to run injured for three years with stress fractures. His body (more specifically shins and knees) couldn't take the tremendous stress involved in long distance running. Running track would have kept him healthier. 2. A cross country runner who has the best time of 15:42 has not pushed his physical limit anymore than a sprinter that has the time of 0:39:5 for the 100m. That sprinter couldn't have possibly ran any faster due to his physical limits. Now lets move on to the 400m, a quarter of a mile sprint. Those runners are dry heaving at the end of the race and are physically exhausted. Moving on to the 800m and 1600m. Again those runners are just as exhausted as a cross country runner at the end of a 5k. Sure the cross country runner ran for a longer time period but his heart rate doesn't reach the levels of a sprinters. Furthermore the body spends energy quickly sprinting than running long distances. Your body creates energy using atp. During a sprint your body has to rapidly produce atp which costs more energy than producing atp at an arobic state. 3. "Allows kids to get more exercise." If you are talking about more exercise on a race day I can't argue that; however, during everyday practice a sprinter could burn as many calories as a cross country runner. The individuals who push themselves extremely hard during practice are the ones that are mentally atheletes. Those individuals would push themselves hard running cross country or track. Thus, cross country may not offer kids more exercise than track. 4. Track allows a wide variety of individuals with different athletic skills to compete together as a team. I am not saying cross country isn't a team sport; however, I will argue that track allows more individuals to participate in areas where they can be more successful. 5. Track brings in more revenue. My cross country team went to semi state and our fan attendance remained only family. Track goes to regional and the stands are full. Generally track is more exciting to watch than cross country. I think this is enough for the first round. I addressed your simple statements and made some other points.