Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Sprinting and -American Sprinters 299 speak, one sweeping upward from the start, and the other sweeping upward to the tape, with a just appreciable "hang" somewhere in the middle dis– tance. It is when a man loses his grip on this definite conception of the whole distance that he runs away from himself and begins to "climb stairs." While thus refining on these purely sub– jective and psychological aspects of the sprint, one may not inappropriately mention another of the less obvious truths about running of which the spectator is not aware. Every man has some distance which, conditions being equal, he can run better than any other distance. This dis– tance is determined by the man's build, tempera– ment, and physical make-up, and it may not coincide with any of those arbitrary distances which we have established by mutual consent as the length of our races. Records are, therefore, to a certain extent, only approximate proofs of the ability of the runners who made them. It is only approximately true to say that Smith is a faster man than Jones because he can con– sistently beat him at one hundred yards, when Jones, perhaps, could beat Smith quite as con– sistently at anything up to half that distance. This is, of course, rather more a theoretical than a practical difficulty, and the man who breaks a world's record earns all the glory that is coming to him. And yet, when the fraction of a watch-