Athletics and Football (extract)

RUNNING AND RUNNERS 73 the many fast sprinters who have hailed from the Universities was a vision of whirling arms and legs. Junker wasflat- footed and erect; Wharton, the champion of 1886, is flat- footed, yet manages somehowto bend his body far forwardas well. Yet manyand various as are the forms whichsprinting abilitytakes, there are one or two signs bywhich a sprinter can be recognised. Whether his legs be short or long, he has large muscular thighs and a broad back. A sprinter, too, to usea cant phrase of pedestrianism,' strips big'— i.e. looks bigger stripped than he does in his clothes; or, in other words, is a heavier man than he appears to be in his ordinary life. But, beforewediscuss the best forms of sprinting and its ex­ ponents,we must saysomething of the practice and exercise whicha sprinter should take in order to reach his best form. The best practice for a 100 or 120 yards race is to have con­ tinual bursts of thirty yardsor sowithanother man, who is about as good or rather better than yourself. If practising with a man whois inferior, you should give him a short start in these ' spins' and catch himas soon as you can. Such practice both helps a man to get into his running quicklyand ' pulls himout,' to use a trainer's expression; that is, the striving to keep pace witha better man, or to catch a man in front whomyou can catch, involuntarilyforces a man to do a little better than his previous best if he is capable of it. A man should never practise sprinting alone; he becomes sluggish,and can never reallytell whether he is doing well or ill. If he is simply training for a 100 or a 120 yards race, after half-a-dozenof these spins he should take a fewminutes' rest and then run the full distance, or at any rate a burst of seventyor eighty yards, before he goes in to have a rub downand resume his clothes. If he is training for 220, 250, or 300 yards he must, of course, accustom him­ self to longer trials; but in general, even for the longest of these distances, it is quite enough to run 200 yards at full speed. In fact, as a general rule, for all practice it maybe laid down that a man should very rarely run a trial for more than