Competing is electric.

Few times in my 28 years have I felt as alive as before, during and after a track or cross country race, sports in which I competed all throughout middle and high school.

It’s the long fall scrambles through cold, cloying mud, the sky a blanket of rain and gray, with nothing to protect you but a thin A-shirt and comically short shorts. It’s the icy spring rain washing your hair and running over your face as you prepare to run a mile on the track, your running spikes digging into the cool, wet asphalt.

It’s the shouts of encouragement — often featuring harmless profanity and internet memes — from your teammates on the grass.

And the moments just before the race starts are the most electric: Jogging near the starting line to keep your muscles warm, checking your shoes one last time, finding your spot on the starting line.

Every second before those races, my heart throbbed faster, my mouth got drier, and a little fear in me grew, telling me I couldn’t do it, this would be the race where I keel over in front of everyone, I’ll post a lousy time, I’ll let my teammates down, why did I ever sign up for this misery in the first place?

Then I hear the crack of the starting gun, smell the sweet sulfuric smoke, all of my senses sharpen like a sword, and I pick up my feet along with every other rain-soaked teenager. I don’t even remember the fear from a second ago. Now that I’ve started, it’s the most simple, fun, instinctive thing in the world: Just run.

Lots of things in life work like that. Getting married or becoming a parent is one, as is moving someplace new. Becoming the editor of a local newspaper is another one.

And when you find yourself in the last 100 meters of the race, neck-and-neck with that irritatingly handsome senior from Fife who narrowly beats you every race, your entire team screaming their heads off at you to GO, GO, GO! – well, that’s just gravy.

I’ve always thanked my older brothers for demanding I take sports seriously as a young person. Competition is a gift that strengthens, humbles and surprises you into becoming a better person.

So as I reflect on my races from a decade ago, I’m pleased to see so much sports coverage in our paper this week — from cross country to rowing, football and soccer. I can only imagine our runners stomping through the same muddy bogs and rain-slicked pavement on which I once ran.

Sports coverage is vital. An article in media nonprofit Poynter this summer argued that local sports coverage, obituaries and other slice-of-life news stories, in helping promote social cohesion, strengthens a community’s sense of pride, optimism and identity and helps it solve its own problems.

My one-mile personal record of five minutes, 32 seconds meant my running career would never make headlines, but I cheered for my teammates who did break records and crush their competitors. And when their names and faces were featured in the news, I took pride in that. Seeing my peers recognized for their success drove me to train harder, which in turn instilled more character, enthusiasm and grit inside of me.

For example: Not only do I know Meron Simon, the athlete who once made ESPN for his heroic victory in a college steeplechase race… but I once kept up with him during the most hellishly fast 30-minute training run of my life. (For him, it was more of a warm-up run.)

So thank you to our sports contributors for chronicling our athletes. They do our community a real service by telling these stories. And thank you to the coaches and families who keep these programs alive.

And to the young athletes: Savor every electric moment of fear, pain and glory, which you will fondly remember years from now. There’s nothing like competing.