What Are the Benefits of Running Track?

Running track provides the benefit of cardiovascular health and increased lung capacity, just as it provides greater endurance physically. Running track then increases your heart's health, your ability to breathe deeply and your ability to withstand more challenging physical activities and sports for lengthier periods of time. You will tire less easily, too, when you do your regular daily chores around the house by being at your physical best.

Cardiovascular Health

• Running track places extreme demands on the body, since some track runs push the runner to run at fast speeds for great distances. This makes the heart work faster and harder, pumping blood throughout the runner's body. As the heart is pressured to perform at such speed and for a lengthy period of time, its condition grows stronger and improves in cardiovascular health. Thus the runner benefits from running track by improving his overall cardiovascular well being and capabilities.

Increasing Endurance

• Running track is not a stop, start and rest exercise. Instead, track runs can take longer to complete than sports activities like a short walk, a weight-training machine exercise or even a few minutes of dancing. Endurance builds as the runner runs on the track for a mile or more, pushing his body to continue on in exercise for a more lengthy period of time than the basketball player running only partially down the court or the tennis player who stops as soon as his opponent misses the ball. Thus the exerciser gains physical endurance, a decided benefit in many areas of life, including off the track sports.

Increases Lung Capacity

• As a runner makes his way around the track loop after loop and at speeds that exceed casual walking or jogging, she puts demands on her lungs. Those demands force this part of her anatomy to increase in capability to accommodate those demands. If the lungs do not increase and expand, the runner cannot adequately perform and meet the expectations on the track. But the lungs expand when demands push this organ more, benefiting from the increased pressure of track running.

Pleasure

• Another great benefit of running track is the release of endorphins experienced by this type of exercise. Endorphins provide a pleasurable feeling when experienced. Running track can provide this "runner's high," which motivates many a runner to return to the track repeatedly for the pleasure of running in addition to the competitive joy he feels when he wins a race or the health benefits he enjoys by running consistently.