You crazy nonconformist you

I don't know why it happens but I believe any formal track I have ever seen runs counter-clockwise. Maybe it's to aid on familiarity but most races (horse, car, human, dog) run this way. My thought is that horse tracks started running counter-clockwise and in order to not confuse the animals with right turns always stayed this way. Then other tracks probably followed suit for consistency and for ease of coverage and arena seating for the best seats in the house along the final stretch.

Then it occurred to me that this can't be it, that the ancient Greeks knew something more than just 'turn left' when they started racing the Great Olympic races... see like toilets the reason may have to do with physics, which like hurricanes in nature always flow in the counter-clockwise direction, so maybe there is more than a reason of conformity here but an actual advantage which has to do with the natural swirl of wind currents based on the gravitational pull of the rotation of the earth. Like all avid Simpson's fans will undoubtedly ask is of course whether Australians run their 400 meter dashes clockwise to get the same effect.

Even all casual jogging is done in this direction which might be done for convention or maybe because there is a natural pull in that direction because there is no hard regulation which says that you must run in a certain way. But even saying that who is more annoying than the guy who insists on running against traffic in the park. Maybe it's my need for rules and my disdain for anarchy but this pattern is unconventional for no specific reason, almost alien or at least southern hemispherian.

Now I am trying to identify the type who runs against the current and all I can say is that they are outliers in our society.

The most notable reverse loop runners are
- the homeless dude I described 6 months ago, who despite his lack of a home (and presumably a shower) can be seen running the prospect park loop -in reverse- every morning at 6:30AM

- Elliot Spitzer, the embattled former governor of New York who resigned due to a prostitution scandal who I caught running south bound on the eastern side of the Central Park loop

- this dude I know Cyrus who is the oldest looking 25 year old I've ever met and who's nickname "the virus" tells you all you need to know about him.

You never see the guy who works a normal schedule and goes for an occasional run insist on running against the grain because we are a country of rules and if we let the little things slip we might as well all start speaking Mexican

Unless of course the people running clockwise are doing twice the work (going against physics and all) and are breeding themselves to become a new dominant race of degenerates.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry