Bredin on Running & Training

MY CAREER AS AN ATHLETE. 131 not haggle over the price; but it must have exercised a similar evil influence over its new owner, as I subse– quently learned that the athlete on the lid was exchanged for a ship under full sail, and that somewhere on the north coast of Ireland this trophy is competed for annually by the members of a yachting club. At the Civil Service sports on June the Ioth I lowered the British 6oo yards record to I min. I I~ sees., in a limited handicap consisting of half-a-dozen starters, beating the second man, E. H. Pelling, on the seventeen yards mark by about twenty yards. This time tied with that made by Myers in New York during '82. Since then T. E. Burke has covered the distance in better time in America. The Huddersfield sports were decided on the following Saturday, and confining my attention to the quarter– mile handicap somewhat late on the programme, I qualified in the second heat, :finishing some three yards behind the winner, to whom I was conceding thirty-five yards start, in 49i sees. The other heats seemed to be going rather faster, and whilst recovering my breath in the dressing-room an official came to ask me when I should prefer the final to be run. It goes without saying that I was fairly f1t, and thinking I might stand two quarters with a very short interval better than most men, I replied " At once." So after one other race had been decided we received word-much to the astonish– ment of the other starters-to turn out for the decider. I might have had ten minutes' rest; the man in the third heat, the one following mine, probably received seven; after covering about 100 yards I felt so leg-weary that I longed to stop, and with difficulty forced m self to K 2