Ditch the Track, Hit the Trails

By Matt Leong

A sea of green trees, overlapping mountains sprouting from the horizon, serene lakes and towering waterfalls. This could describe a variety of scenic locations in California within four hours' drive: Yosemite, Tahoe, or even Kings Canyon. Minus the waterfalls, all these wonders of nature are merely five minutes away.

Local regional parks are free to use and easily accessible, which is why I don’t understand that the only people I see there are middle-aged or elderly. Meanwhile, the PHS track is filled with high school athletes running around in monotonous circles, struggling to stay in shape for the next sports season. It doesn’t surprise me that most of these runners' facial expressions show suffering and discontent as they struggle to crank out another eight or 10 laps.

These are the same students who ask me, a track runner, why I choose to run around in circles as my sport. To them, circle running seems boring and pointless. I completely agree.

I started exploring the trail systems in Oakland after my first cross-country season freshman year. My teammates and I would hop in a car, take the freeway one or two exits, and enter the tree-shaded trailhead. For the next hour or so, seeing glimpses of the bay, exploring new trails and avoiding obstacles would take our minds off of the actual struggle of running. Rather than feeling exhausted after a long distance run, we would feel refreshed and reenergized from time spent away from the city setting.

A track is not a whole lot better than a treadmill. The never-changing scenery and predictable flatness are much akin to running in place. On a trail, one can emerge from a canopy of trees into a panorama of the entire East Bay when running on the trails.

Some argue that artificial surface of the track is protective of the knees. On the trails, nature has laid down a natural carpet of dirt and fallen leaves, which also proves beneficial to the joints and knees, as opposed to asphalt.

For the price of just a five or ten-minute drive, you can find a place that saturates the senses and dares you to run even further to explore new terrain. So take my word of advice: stop running around in circles.