Bredin on Running & Training

122 RUNNING AND TRAINING. consideration will be shown to the sportsmen of France or any other nation by British athletes. Perusing the columns of the Life about that time, I noticed an advertisement to the effect that at sports at a certain Welsh town in the hills a race was to be held for the quarter-mile championship of \Vales. Having lost the only one really worth having, I was extra keen on championships in those days, so wrote the secretary, pointing out that I could not lay claim to being a Taffy, but if the race advertised was an open one, would be pleased to enter. I received a satisfactory reply, and after a long and tedious railway journey, and no little difficulty in making myself understood by the foreigners I questioned during my wanderings in search of the grounds, I at length reached a flat piece of land on the side of a hil1, where a very fair cinder-path had been laid out, excepting that the corners were rather sharp. There I ran up against an old acquaintance, who was brewing, or employed in some such avocation, in those benighted parts, and over a glass of milk apiece in the refreshment tent he informed me that a well-known and really very fair athlete had recently arrived in the town, and that this championship race found a place on the programme for his benefit-in fact, that my principal opponent had already chosen a large silver bowl for the first prize, and had invited a little party of friends of both sexes to see him gain a glorious victory. A 300 yards handicap also figured among the list of events . I turned out to stretch my legs, and, finding the heat an easy one, won it, and a little later managed to annex the Welsh championship, finishing I