By Bethany Garrity (National Institute for Fitness and Sport)
I’m not an Indiana native and I didn’t grow up around race car driving. I’m a Buckeye – I’m all about the football. So I was recently lamenting the complete absence of any good current college football on TV. I can only watch the Big Ten Network reruns so many times and I got to thinking (OK – so I was complaining) about the other sports that are or will soon be getting play time. Let’s see - there’s baseball, hockey, golf, and racing. For me, baseball, hockey and golf are sports. Not sports I love, but I do view them as athletic pursuits; though I’ll admit, it took me a while to come around to golf as a “sport”. Racing is a different story. Unless we’re talking about racing on foot, it just doesn’t resonate with me as a sport.
I originally chalked that “it’s not a sport” mentality for race car driving up to the fact that I simply wasn’t into the hype. I don’t know anything about race car driving, and to be honest, I didn’t see the physical challenge in driving a car in circles. However, with two young boys at home, I started thinking it might behoove me to get on board with something they could potentially love, and I figured that maybe I could embrace Indiana’s racing culture if I could see it as a sport.
So I started researching the Indy Racing League (IRL) to see what I could find out about stock car racing. Let me set the scene of my racing ignorance for you – I had to research and confirm that the IRL was stock car racing, and it was only after that confirmation that I actually tied NASCAR into the whole thing.
I started seeing the term “land rocket” in my search, and I noted that the drivers sometimes maintained speeds of 200 mph for four to six hours and in high heat. My education in exercise science began to kick in and I realized that those physical demands had to have some kind of traditional exercise component, and thus, perhaps stock car racing really was an athletic pursuit. There has to be something “fitness-y” about drivers expected to produce under those conditions.
My conclusion – it turns out race car driving is a sport! I found quite a bit about training regimes both on and off “season”. But what hit home most for me was a press release from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The ACSM is one of the top certifying and educating bodies in the field of health and exercise. In a press release for a December, 2002, article in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise journal, they noted that drivers reach levels of exertion similar to what athletes playing basketball might attain.
They also noted that the work level for a driver is comparable to someone running at an eight to ten minute per mile pace. Now that is something I can relate to as I’m wrapping up training for my first Indianapolis Mini Marathon with a nine minute per mile pace group. It’s hard for me to imagine maintaining that pace for four to six hours with temperatures in the high 90’s to over 100 degrees.
Go NASCAR, go IRL – race your hearts out! I can’t promise I’ll watch with enthusiasm and follow like a true fan, but my appreciation has grown. Now, if we could just get more sports fans to adopt a piece of the exercise routines from their most beloved drivers, pitchers, shooters, goalies, defenders…
I’m not an Indiana native and I didn’t grow up around race car driving. I’m a Buckeye – I’m all about the football. So I was recently lamenting the complete absence of any good current college football on TV. I can only watch the Big Ten Network reruns so many times and I got to thinking (OK – so I was complaining) about the other sports that are or will soon be getting play time. Let’s see - there’s baseball, hockey, golf, and racing. For me, baseball, hockey and golf are sports. Not sports I love, but I do view them as athletic pursuits; though I’ll admit, it took me a while to come around to golf as a “sport”. Racing is a different story. Unless we’re talking about racing on foot, it just doesn’t resonate with me as a sport.
I originally chalked that “it’s not a sport” mentality for race car driving up to the fact that I simply wasn’t into the hype. I don’t know anything about race car driving, and to be honest, I didn’t see the physical challenge in driving a car in circles. However, with two young boys at home, I started thinking it might behoove me to get on board with something they could potentially love, and I figured that maybe I could embrace Indiana’s racing culture if I could see it as a sport.
So I started researching the Indy Racing League (IRL) to see what I could find out about stock car racing. Let me set the scene of my racing ignorance for you – I had to research and confirm that the IRL was stock car racing, and it was only after that confirmation that I actually tied NASCAR into the whole thing.
I started seeing the term “land rocket” in my search, and I noted that the drivers sometimes maintained speeds of 200 mph for four to six hours and in high heat. My education in exercise science began to kick in and I realized that those physical demands had to have some kind of traditional exercise component, and thus, perhaps stock car racing really was an athletic pursuit. There has to be something “fitness-y” about drivers expected to produce under those conditions.
My conclusion – it turns out race car driving is a sport! I found quite a bit about training regimes both on and off “season”. But what hit home most for me was a press release from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The ACSM is one of the top certifying and educating bodies in the field of health and exercise. In a press release for a December, 2002, article in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise journal, they noted that drivers reach levels of exertion similar to what athletes playing basketball might attain.
They also noted that the work level for a driver is comparable to someone running at an eight to ten minute per mile pace. Now that is something I can relate to as I’m wrapping up training for my first Indianapolis Mini Marathon with a nine minute per mile pace group. It’s hard for me to imagine maintaining that pace for four to six hours with temperatures in the high 90’s to over 100 degrees.Go NASCAR, go IRL – race your hearts out! I can’t promise I’ll watch with enthusiasm and follow like a true fan, but my appreciation has grown. Now, if we could just get more sports fans to adopt a piece of the exercise routines from their most beloved drivers, pitchers, shooters, goalies, defenders…
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