Field Site: Track Meet

In the field site you have multiple track athletes training, warming up, stretching, communicating, and plotting on how they are going to run they race, and sleeping. Many of them are inside to stay out of the sun so it won’t drain their bodies. Also many athletes are rubbing down there legs and shins with ice, tiger balm, or icy hot to relieve pain. You also have coaches checking recent event results to see what their athletes been running. They also communicate with other coaches and giving tips to their athletes about how they should run they next event. Also majority of the time at my field site the athletes are running there events on the track. You see them prepare their blocks or starting position and then when signaled to run they run.

Many of the people in this subculture interact by the relays teams practicing their hand off to prepare for the relay run. Or you have athletes from the same team warming up together to get ready for the race and giving each other advice on what to do and how to improve. Also you have the coaches calling athletes to meet with them to give them a pat on the back and say, “good job,” or to critique them on what they did wrong. Also while viewing what’s going on. You notice not just running going on you have many field events taking place. Such as high jump, pole vault, triple jump and long jump.

I really didn’t have any questions about what was going on because everything was pretty much self explanatory. There was nothing to question or ask why they were doing what they were doing because it was obvious. And lastly I asked a runner why he ran his race the way he did. I asked him did he give up at the end or was that his strategy on running his race. His reply was it was his strategy but it didn’t really go as planned so he ended up not doing as well as he wanted to. He was very upset because his strategy did not work. His strategy was to sprint hard the first 200 meters of the 400 meter dash, then slow down in the curve and then sprint hard on the last 100. But when he slowed down it gave the other athletes and opportunity to pass him.