Track and Field Blogs - Brian Sell

On the way down the hill to meet the team the other morning, Clint came up with a great point that I decided to write about this time around. His opinion was that runners are like cats or dogs. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him, and I have come to the conclusion that most runners could be defined by a ratio of cat-ness to dog-ness. If you've ever had a dog, you know that they will eat as much as you feed them. When my dog Toby was a puppy, his bag of food spilled one day and by the time I walked in, he had consumed almost half the bag. He then proceeded to barf it all up and then wolfh his own barf back down. A dog will eat until it explodes and then eat its guts, its just how a dog is. A cat, on the other hand will look at you like it hates your guts as you fill his dish with food. He will wait around till you're gone and eat just enough to satisfy himself. He makes sure he can get by even if you feed him the next day or not. If he goes for a week without food, he will simply go out and kill a mouse to eat. A cat doesn't need you, and sometimes I think he is smarter than his owner. Runners are very similar. Some guys will run their guts out the first month of a segment, only to crash and burn in the later stages and race horribly. Some guys will train overly "smart" and not be 100% fit on race day. I think the best runners are a 50:50 ratio of dog to cat, willing to hammer when need be, but also smart enough not to destroy themselves in training and leave their best race on the practice field.