Athletics of To-Day 1929

CHAPTER VI THE DISTANCES- 2 TO IO MILES FROM time immemorial English schoolboys have been taught to run distances from a very t nder age upwards. Such games as paper-chasing and hare and hounds were in vogue long before organised athletic sports were dr amed of, and such events as the Crick Run at Rugby, the Long Pen Pole at Clifton, and the Shrewsbury, Bradfi.eld, Malvern, and edburgh steeplechases or cross-country runs were among the first of our regular fixtures. Some of those long runs n1ay be too much for the growing strength of an immature lad, and at Sedburgh no boy is allowed to compete unless he can pass a series of stiff medical examinations. With this custom as a foundation it was asy and natural for England to produce a race of good distance runners. In ngland, feats of enduranc seem to have been more popular than tests of sp din olden times, and yet when the Oxford and ambridge ports started in r864 there was no flat race of a gr ater distanc than one mil . In r865, howev r, a two miles vent was introduc d, and in r868 the two miles was r placed by a three mil s event. This was won by the c 1 brat d xonian, J. H. Morgan, who trotted home 200 yards ahead of his n arest opponent jn IS mins. 20t secs. He was the id al type of distance runner, short and strong, but lightly built with a good deep chest. No one ever got near him in the three years he won the Inter– University race. R. C. Garnett, C.U.A.C., who won the first English four miles hampionship, r866, in 21 mins. 41 secs., got his blue in r864 gr