Bredin on Running & Training

•' ODDS AND ENDS." 93 are apt to be clumsy in running, and to go round curves less easily than is the case with ordinary runners, there would doubtless be a further loss, and perhaps some smart sprinters might not be quite four yards to the bad over each bend. It would be interesting to see what time a man would take to run roo yards, beginning and finishing it round the end of an ordinary quarter-mile track. If he could cover this distance in eleven seconds along a straight, I think twelve would prove beyond his power under such conditions. Taking 220 yards, which is a distance I have frequently run over the long straight at Stamford Bridge, I found that I was between seven and eight yards faster there than was the case in races at a similar distance with one bend to come round. In America, where men frequently practise and race during winter over a small course in a building, the above estimates would not hold good. All the American runners I have seen in England were exceptionally fast men round curves, without doubt owing to their system of training indoors. Handicapping must always be a difficult and some- ;vhat thankless task under the present state of amateur athletics, when the great majority of runners are engaged in working up a long start, and only try when they have, through frequently running unplaced, gained such a mark that they hold the back division safe and made their chances of success extremely probable. · Lately a rule was passed compelling all starts to be made from the amateur champion at scratch in each recognised distance, whether the holder of the title entered for the race or not, with, I presume, the