Light The Cauldron

The FIFA Women's World Cup and the Olympic Games have a very close relationship. Because of the sport's popularity in the world and the close proximity that the two have on the calendar, they are linked to each other.

Even though football is very popular, the women's events in both the World Cup and the Olympics are pretty young. The official Women's World Cup didn't begin until 1991 while women's football didn't get a place in the Olympics until Atlanta 1996. Since then, the popularity of women's football has increase, though unfortunately it will likely never reach the prominence of the men's sport.

There are differences; while the World Cup offers a place for 24 nations, the Olympics can only have room for twelve due to the time constraints. The World Cup qualification is a three year ordeal, while the Olympics get their nations from confederations cups, except for Europe! They actually will get their qualifications for the Olympics if they plac…

Wednesday was Global Running Day.

Not "National" Running Day. Global Running Day! The world celebrates running!

To celebrate, the social media for USA Track and Field tweeted this out:


It made me consider why people run. For Olympians and Olympian-caliber athletes, they run because they want to compete at a high level and win. That's easy. But why do others run? Those that aren't capable of running fast times are running for some reason, right?

Let's even broaden the question even further to include more people: Why do we exercise?

In our history, there was never a copious need to run because people in the world were too busy trying to survive! They grew crops, worked in factories, and ran businesses while eating whatever they could afford. If they didn't make money, they didn't eat. If the crops didn't grow, they didn't eat. Treats and snacks were few and far between, because the need was just to get something in the stomach.

Nowadays, much of th…