The History of Running:
The ancient form of this simple movement began long ago with the hunter-gatherer Homo Sapiens. Early man tracked their prey and often had to flee from predators using their lower limbs once the instinctive chemical reaction that stimulates the adrenal glands had triggered a ‘fight or flight’ response. We now refer to this natural ability as running.
Running has long been considered a sport. The first Olympics was staged and initiated in 776BC, with the sprint being the very first event. The inauguration of the modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 signalled running taking on a completely different meaning for sports professionals and enthusiasts. Until the sanctioning of the 1980 Moscow Games by the US president Jimmy Carter, and the 1980s running boom that followed, running attracted much less attention than it does today.
Running has since become the basis of many stories and documentaries, such as the famous Chariots of Fire (1981), which tells the stories of Scotland’s Eric Liddell and England’s Harold Abrahams who won the 400m and 100m races respectively at the Paris games in 1924. Their successes triggered interest in a marvellous sport that now dominates the headlines every four years. Other running legends include Emil Zotopek and Roger Bannister, who set unthinkable achievements symbolically comparable to those of the first man on the moon and the climbers who conquered Mount Everest.
Running may seem like an impossible task for some, symbolising pain and injury, but it can also be incredibly liberating and the most rewarding sport of all. While it may be perceived to be for loners, for one person’s wholehearted commitment, running for conditioning is the basis of all sports, with the possible exception of bodybuilding.
