History is one of my favorite subjects. There’s just something about people and things of the past I just enjoy. Some may call me a history fanatic due to my rapid recollection of specific times, battles, dates, etc.

But I noticed that there’s a bit of history that I don’t have saved in my “inventory.”

Many people say that we love Cross Country running. We have t-shirts, we make posters. We even get into arguments with people who say that Cross Country isn’t a sport - that it’s just running.

However, I can guarantee that if you ask most runners (myself included) where and when Cross Cross Country originated, they wouldn’t be able to tell you.

So I decided to go on a little history quest and found some interesting things.

When I started running competitively in high school, I began in the summer by running Cross Country.

When the newspaper released the articles about us, they referred to us as “the harriers.”

I never understood what that meant until now.

Harriers

The term “harriers” goes back to the early 19th century. Cross Country running began in England with a game called "Hare and Hounds" or "The paper chase."

The rules were simple:

A runner or group of runners laid a trail by dropping pieces of paper or other markers while following a random course, and a second set of runners then set out in pursuit, trying to follow the paper trail.

The first formal competition was the Crick Run, first held at Rugby School in 1837.

English schools started competing in cross country races and established a national championship on December 7, 1867. It was held on Wimbledon Common in south-west London.

It was the first Cross Country race that was considered "open", or could be run by anyone. Its original purpose was to imitate the steeplechase for off-season training, and was considered a bit of a joke.

The race was about 3.5 miles long, and went through very boggy and hilly terrain. The course was not well marked, and many competitors got lost. Matters were not helped by the fact that the race was run in the dark, as it began at 5 pm. Many other public schools soon established similar events, followed by Oxford and Cambridge Universities. 

From Game to Sport

Although Hare and Hounds continued to be popular at schools, in important competition, the game became a cross country race along a course laid out in advance, over open country.

The English National Cross Country championship was established in 1876.

Two years later, 1878, William C. Vosburgh of New York introduced the sport to the United States.

In 1887, the National Cross Country Association was founded, and the association held its first championship event.

The Amateur Athletic Association began conducting the national championship in 1880.

Also in 1880, Cross Country running was introduced at Harvard as an autumn training event for track and field distance runners, and other colleges quickly followed Harvard's example.

International Cross Country racing began in 1898 with competition between England and France. An annual championship meet involving England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales started in 1903 and became a true international event in 1907, when France sent a team to compete.

Other European countries followed during the 1920s.

Cross Country was on the Olympic program in 1912, 1920, and 1924, but it was dropped after that because it was considered unsuitable for summer competition.

Modern Cross Country

The annual NCAA Cross Country championship grew out of a meet inaugurated by the Central Intercollegiate Conference (CIC) in 1926. During the 1930s, so many schools began entering teams that the NCAA took it over as a national championship event in 1938.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), which governs track and field worldwide, took over jurisdiction of cross-country in 1962, establishing rules for both men and women. The first women's world championship meet was held in 1967, a year after the AAU established a national championship for women.

There is no standardized cross-country distance.  IAAF rules specify minimums for international competition of 12,000 meters (about 7.5 miles) for men and 2,000 to 5,000 meters (about 1.25 to 3 miles) for women. Since distances and difficulty vary, world records are not kept for the event.

People say that Cross Country changes your life. In certain aspects, I find it to be true. Through my research, I learned very important and rather interesting things about the sport; and in turn changed how I look at the sport. Cross Country has come a long way since "The paper chase" days. Although we don’t chase paper or have to hurdle over fences, much of the original game is still very much alive today.  

Now if you ever get into an argument with someone over Cross Country being a sport, you won’t be forced to a halt when they ask when it came into existence because now you’ll have an answer ready.

Now you know.