Athletics and Football (extract)

84 ATHLETICS for a quarter upon exactly the same system. To lay down a short and comprehensive rule for the first class, we should say that the sprinter whotrains for a quarter-mileshould train for it in the same way as he does for a sprint. His trial spins should be over longerdistances up to 220or 300 yards,and his stretches round the path or the grass—we mean the slowstride round upon the toes which we have already described—should be longer ; but, being a sprinter, he should recollect that it is upon his speed and freshnessthat he must rely to win, and he should on no account let his practice jade or exhaust him. Once and once only (if at all) should he run the full distance of the quarter at full speed, and after that should take a day of almost complete rest. A hard quarter-mile run out is likely to exhaust and impair the energies for a long while, and if once a man in training gets a bit stale, it is a far harder task to bring him back to fitness than to make him fit in the first instance. A personal reminiscence may perhaps avail to point a moral while this subject is under discussion. The writer and his brother were both training for the Amateur Championship in 1878. Unfortunately they were ill-advised enough to run two matches before the event to find out for certain which wasthe better man, but in the second race theywere so closely matched that they ran each other to a standstill. This was a week beforethe race, and the consequence wasthat on the day of the race both were utterlyand hopelessly stale. From the result of the race it became evident that their only twoopponents were in an equally 'weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable' condition, for the race waswon in the slow time of 52^ seconds. When such a fact occurs as the only four entrants fora championshiprace coming to the scratch overtrained, it may be gathered that a warningagainst doing too much work is not unnecessary. The sprinter then who trains for a quarter-mile should take his starts and short sprints daily, and finish up two or three times a week with bursts of 200, 220, or occasionally300 yards, and at the same time should from time to time take his practice strides upon his toes more frequently than if he were merely