Athletics of To-Day 1929

CHAPTER IX THE LONG DISTANCES-30 TO IOO MILES THE world's history and the archives of pedestrianism are rich in romantic legends of prodigious feats accomplished by the long distance runners of ancient times. In the Middle Ages the couriers maintained by monarchs and municipalities were the recognized distance running champions, the Basque country, Britain, Italy, Tartary, and Turkey being reputed to have produced the best men. The Peichs, or Persian couriers, of the Turkish Sultans, it is said, were well able to run from Constantinople to Adrianople and back, a distance of about 220 miles, in two days and two nights, during which time they carried silver beads in their mouths to counteract thirst. I have myself known dak runners and other natives in Africa and India to perform some extraordinary feats of sustained speed and endurance, while the rench-Arab, El Ouafi, and the Japanese Marathon men, Yamada and Isuda, have recently shown us what the coloured races can do, but even so, and in view of well authenticated records which will be quoted presently, the performances of the Peichs would appear to b long rather to the nature of fiction than fact. In the post-Restoration period, as we have seen in the opening pages of this book, it was the running footmen of the English nobility who gained notoriety in the phase of athletics under consideration. Half-way through the eighteenth century we come across records of a man who may be said to have been the long distance champion of the world for nearly five and twenty years. This was Foster Powell, born at Horsforth, near Leeds, in I734, and afterwards clerk to a solicitor of New Inn, London. !26