Running and Puritans?

Almost every day when I get home from school, I drop off my school bag, grab my running shoes, and set out for my daily run. Lately, I have chosen to run from my house north on the Greenbay trail. Today, I unintentionally ventured further than normal and found myself on the trail looking at New Trier from above. Instead of during the day, when just the sight of school makes me think about tests, homework, and stressful projects, New Trier looked picturesque, calm, and it actually looked like a place I would want to be 5 days a week. Looking down at it, I felt as though I was looking at school from a newer and more powerful perspective.

Could this be similar to what the Puritans were looking for when coming from England to the New World?  Every day in England, they struggled with the anxiety of the religion they loved so much being corrupted by the Anglican church. They decided to make the long voyage into territory that they had never explored before, but in the end their difficult journey payed off. They were now allowed to look upon their religion with fresh eyes and re-evaluate it, making it something they could live with and enjoy.

Race In Running

When we talked about race and running in class today, it held a particular significance to me because I am on the track and cross country team.I had heard the "fast twitch theory" before, the idea that African-Americans are faster sprinters because their fast-twitch muscles are more proficient than white peoples'. It was interesting to me that there seems to be no actual biological evidence that African-Americans are faster runners. My question now is...so why are they?

At the state track meet in May I saw a definite distinction between the skin color of people in the short distance events to people in the longer distance events. In fact, 5/5 of the top finishers in the 200m were black, as opposed to the 5/5 top finishers in the 3200m who where white. Is it possible that the expectations on the athletes play a part in what event they choose to run? Is an African-American girl who shows talent in both elite distance running and elite sprinting more likely to chose sprinting that's where she feels she belongs based on previous sprinting feats by black women? If this is true than that could mean that African-Americans aren't neccessarily better at sprinting, there are just more of them that focus on sprinting instead of disntence because they expect to be better at it and it is "cooler" for that "race" (race is loosely defined after our in-class discussion).