Bredin on Running & Training

QUARTER-MILING. 21 finish no faster than he would have done running hard from the start. I make this statement with some confidence owing to the fact that I have never yet seen a sprinter proper run the latter portion of a quarter at any remarkable pace. Old Nat Perry's advice to all quarter-milers used to be:" Run the first 300 yards as fast as you can, and then try to go a little bit faster "-by a strict adherence to which I once threw away an amateur championship; but the old trainer had never grasped the fact that what would suit one style of runner might be suicidal to another. In the previous chapter I referred to the fact that no one can run even 100 yards all through at his utmost pace. It therefore stands to reason that there is a certain limit to the rate at which our sprinting quarter– miler must run. This it is somewhat difficult to define, but it should be at very little less than that which he employs in the first 250 of a 300 yards race; or, in other words, run the quarter as if it were a 300 yards race, but without spurting at about half its distance, as would be necessary for the latter event. To what an extent speed is lost covering a quarter can be calculated by the fact that a man who could last 440 yards, running each 100 yards in exactly ten seconds, would therefore be able to do, not forty-four, but about forty-two seconds, owing to his gaining five yards at the commencement of every century, after the first, by beginning them with a flying start. In dealing with the striding quarter-·miler I must point out that whilst his sprinting opponent can derive no benefit from any