High Altitude Training
For the first mile of my daily run the cows are with me. They seem out of place along this road that winds through mountain pines, but in Arizona cows are everywhere, even at 7,000 feet. They watch incredulously with soft eyes as I run by. They stand as still as statues and only their heads move, slowly and almost imperceptibly, like the heads in paintings of long-dead relatives that gaze right at you, no matter where you stand in the room. I can’t tell if they approve of all this running activity; they are silent.
No matter how far I decide to run each day, running that first mile is the hardest. I feel the same niggling pain under my ribs each time, and wonder how overnight I forgot how to run. Each day I tell myself that I must be going about this running thing all wrong. My shoes are old and probably not the right sort of shoes at all. I’m wearing cotton socks. I expect at any moment a van, driven by a member of the International Federation of Runners, will pull up beside me. A fleet of sleek runners wearing custom made running shoes and synthetic socks will pile out of the back of the van and issue a citation. Or they will grab me and drive off with a screech of tires, taking me to an interrogation room where they will seat me under a bare bulb and ask, “Just who do you think your are?”
I look around uneasily. No vans. No running police. I guess I will have to keep running.
I smirk at the cows, glad that I’m faster than someone.
I came upon running by accident, when I was digging through a pile of magazines at my local used bookstore. I pulled out a copy of a running magazine that had a picture of a beautiful woman on it, a woman with a blond ponytail. She looked happy and carefree. I wanted to be her. My friend Ellyn looked over my shoulder and said casually, “Oh, Suzy Favor.
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country gives readers a look into the federal government’s failed policy to preserve grazing lands by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of livestock with a particular focus on women. Centering around women because they are the primary owners and caretakers of livestock in Navajo reservations.
They race against themselves: to conquer their wills, to transcend their weaknesses, to beat back their nightmares" (603). This quotation shows that running is not always competition, but it helps runners overcome their
to keep running and never stop.” This mission statement is to motivate past and future runners in
It is a common notion that hunting isn’t fair to animals, that they have right to be free from human intervention. However, hunters lead conservation efforts in the United States. They do more to help preserve wildlife habitats, which is essential to wildlife welfare, than any other group. Indeed, habitat destruction poses a greater risk to wildlife today than hunting and conservation helps promote animal welfare. On the surface, these claims may seem counterintuitive. Hunters in the United States, however, fund wildlife conservation more than any other sources combined. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, “Hunters contribute over $1.6 billion annually to conservation. Hunters are without peer when it comes to funding the perpetuation and conservation of wildlife natural habitats” (“Hunting” 6). Without these f...
According to Andrew Herman, “Each year, 14,000 die from drinking too much. 600,000 are victims of alcohol related physical assault and 17,000 are a result of drunken driving deaths, many being innocent bystanders” (470). These massive numbers bring about an important realization: alcohol is a huge issue in America today. Although the problem is evident in Americans of all ages, the biggest issue is present in young adults and teens. In fact, teens begin to feel the effects of alcohol twice as fast as adults and are more likely to participate in “binge-drinking” (Sullivan 473). The problem is evident, but the solution may be simple. Although opponents argue lowering the drinking age could make alcohol available to some teens not mature enough to handle it, lowering the drinking age actually teaches responsibility and safety in young adults, maintains consistency in age laws, and diminishes temptation.
Cloud, John. "Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?" TIME U.S. N.p., 6 June 2008. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
Without a doubt, the United States has been facing serious national problems with underage drinking. Depending on personal ideologies, some people might not agree that the current minimum drinking age of twenty-one is based on scientific facts rather then ideology of prohibitionism. For example, since 1975 over seventeen thousand lives have been saved since the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) was changed to age twenty-one (Balkin 167). This shows that even over a short amount of time, a higher MLDA helps decrease the risk of teen suicides, accidents and overdose deaths. However, this widely debated topic has inevitably brought attention to the plethora of supporting and opposing viewpoints. The minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one has shown significant results in the prevention of accidents and death studies across the board. Accordingly, the MLDA should remain at the current age of twenty-one.
For much of society prison is viewed as a facility that segregates and imprisons individuals who commit acts of crimes considered deviant from accepted social behaviors, to ensure the safety and security of the overall community. These individuals are thus handed down a mandated sentence, stripped of their individual freedoms, and are told to reflect on their actions as a means of punishment. However, this method fails to recognize the notion that a majority of these people will one day be allowed back into society, and as a result those who are released tend to fall back into old habits contributing to the rising recidivism rate that currently plagues our prisons. In recent years there has been a gradual push for the implementation of rehabilitation
For the past several years runners all over the world have been trying to figure out and arguing over the simple question: “Is high mileage training better than low mileage, during training season?” Kenyan’s in Africa have been running unbelievable amounts of mileage for years, and tend to always be in the top field in any race over five thousand meters. While Africans have been leading the fields for years, where do the best US runners end up? Not in the lead pack! Perhaps they are training too hard to be like their Kenyan counterparts. I think a lot of runners believe that if they train like the runners from Kenya that they will have the same results. When in truth they end up running themselves into the ground. Perhaps that is why there are others that think that if they train light and more to their athletic ability level that they will have better results.
Meanwhile, with the pressure of budge shortfalls, rehabilitation increasingly becomes to be one of the most effective way to place offenders. Restorative justice is a criminal rehabilitation system that aims to reduce recidivism rates. In Minnesota and Vermont, restorative justice programs have been implemented as a rehabilitation tool, rather than abolishing imprisonment. The main idea is that offenders could benefit from reduced sentences by completing programs (Immarigeon, 1995). Drug rehabilitation is one of the programs that have been proved to be effective on reducing recidivism rates. The programs include the “in-prison treatment” , “the work release program” and aftercare program. It is reported by the Federal Bureau of Prisons that drug offenders accounts for a large part of prisoners housed in federal prisons, which is about 52.2 percent (Rosansky, n.d.). In the study, it is found that more than 75 per cent of offenders who complete the programs do not recidivate. The reason why this program succeeded is that the policy makers target the potential collateral consequence that it is difficult for prisoners to reintegrate into society after the
Summiting the infamous Spark Hill, I hear the heavy breathing of four runners and the grinding of loose gravel beneath aching legs. As the course levels and veers left between the boys and girls dorms, I accelerate into the lead. Not one hundred meters later, I question my bold strategy. With still over a mile to go, my body tells me that it’s feeling a lot of pain. I decide to push even harder, for this pain is nothing compared to the pain that woke me up one night during spring break my Junior Year.
Even Diving into the Wreck plays a more general note of individuality than of feminism; in the words of Judith Lewin, ‘In Rich’s 1972 poem “Diving into the Wreck,” the lyrical voice is that of a diver, who, as her body descends in the water, resists the distraction of undersea life in order to pursue her goal, both the exploration of a sunken ship and the exploration of self’(54).
Wilford, John Noble. "Running the Extra Mile Sets the Human Apart." New York Times [New York] 18 Nov. 2004, A24: n. pag. SIRS Knowledge Source. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. .
As a result of underage drinking, 5,000 adolescents under the age of 21 die annually due to intoxication (taking motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and other injuries while intoxicated into consideration) (paragraph 2). Later in life, underage drinkers are more likely to develop alcoholism, poor performance in school, and risky sexual behavior (paragraph 43). Although this research is not opposed to my argument, there is an importance to acknowledging it as proof of dangerous, underage drinking occurring significantly regardless of whether it is illegal. More importantly, this research stems from adolescents drinking without the supervision of adults and in uncontrolled quantities. Since adolescents must wait a long period of time to drink legally, I believe they fear they must take advantage of drinking opportunities by excess drinking and risk of safety due to their restriction to alcohol. Based on this mindset, I believe exposure to alcohol at a younger age in controlled environments would not only decrease underage drinking in large quantities, but injury and death related to intoxication, as
McKibben, Bill. " The Only Way to Have a Cow." Orion Magazine. Journal Article, Mar.-Apr. 2010.