Running Recollections and How to Train

CHAPTER VII. METHOD OF TRAINING IN THE EARLY PART OF THE PRESENT CENTURY. SOME account of the manner in which a pedestrian was trained inthe daysbefore Her Majesty the Queen was born may, the Editor hopes, be found of interest to runners, both amateur and professional, boxing men, and athletes generally. The directions are those laid down by that celebrated pedestrian, Captain Barclay, perhaps best remembered as the man who, in the early part of the present century, w.dked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hourson Newmarket Heath. Captain Barclay came from a family celebrated for strength and athletic ability :his father was so powerful a man that it is narrated of him, that finding a stray horse in one of his fields he lifted it on his shoulders andthrew it over the hedge; while his grandfather, when a member of Parliament, representing Kincardine, made it a practice to walk to Westminster, from Urie, his home, at the com­ mencement of each session, and would pick up many a prize hat for cudgel play, and wrestling on the road. Our present members travelby express trainat 50 milesan hour. "The times have changed for other things as well as training, andwe with them." After reading the directions for training, it will be realized that the Captain, if he practised what he preached, hadneed, indeed, tobe a strong man; such an awful course of purging and sweating were surely enough to reduce an ordinary individual to nothing better than a likely candidate for place honours in a coffin. K 2