Bredin on Running & Training

[, II l II go RUNNING AND TRAINING. watch, marking fifths of a second, would be of little use for anything covering the ground at the rate a whippet does. When one of these watches marking off minute fractions of a second happens to be accurate it is of the utmost value, but watches are apt to vary considerably, even when sold by a firm of makers who manufacture them on the same pattern. Price seems to be of little consequence; a silver watch at seven guineas is as likely to be reliable as a gold chronometer for which ten times that sum is paid. Because a watch keeps good time, it does not follow that it will be correct for athletic purposes, the fault being frequently due to the spaces marked off on the dial being of unequal lengths a part, so that the large hand, though covering each minute exactly, may be either fast or slow at any intermediate distance. I used one for some time that ran evenly for half a minute, and lost only thirty seconds in a week, but made men run two-fifths faster than they actually did at the fifty seconds mark. The class of watch started by a small knob. at the side is much to be preferred to that termed" fly-backs," where the large hand is set in motion by pressure on the top ; and, with regard to all chronometers, those that cease to go when the large hand is stopped are more liable to be good timekeepers than the others made with a separate mechanism for the ordinary hands, to that required by the one denoting fifths of a second. Leaving time, and coming to the subject of cinder– paths, one of the A. A. A. laws is to this effect: "All tracks shall be measured twelve inches from the inner