Bredin on Running & Training

l. 92 RUNNING AND TRAINING. their solidity may compensate for their lack of life. The best track I was ever on, wearing running shoes, was certainly that at Iffley Road ground, Oxford. Stamford Bridge, and Powderhall grounds, at Edinburgh, I should place next on this list; perhaps there was more spring in the former-at any rate, before the bicycle craze, which did the surface much harm; but Powderhall is slightly banked at the ends, which is of great aid in keeping men from running wide on reaching the bends, so probably the two are on a par in races such as 300 and 440 yards. Neither of these last-mentioned tracks were as fast as Fenner's, at Cambridge, or the one at the Northampton County grounds; but this was owing to their shape, not their composition. The shape and circumference of a track have naturally mo.re effect on the times accomplished on it in races run at a great rate of speed. Taking a quarter-mile, for example, the fastest course would be that which lay in a straight line; following such a one, the horseshoe-shaped track; and the slowest an ordinary one of four laps to the mile-that is, without considering tracks of 220 and 300 yards once round, which are too rare to be taken into consideration in comparing the value of fast performances that have been accomplished in this country. A man who could run a quarter at Stamford Bridge in fifty seconds would probably do 49i on a track with only one bend to negotiate, and half a second faster again on a straight course. As the styles of runners differ, this allowance of four yards for each bend, or half-circle, can only be taken as an intermediate estimate. With long-striding men, who