Success in Athletics and how to obtain it

32 SUCCESS IN ATHLETICS great, it will be futile for the young runner to hope that he will come to maturity after two or even three years' training and competition; year by year he will undoubtedly improve, but it will be years before he will attain to the fullness of perfection. Many a man who in his first ye'ar has raced at 440 and 88o yards exclusively, and has afterwards taken to road or even cross-country running during the winter, has come back next season to the half– mile distance with vastly improved powers of stamina, and by judicious sprinting practice from 300 to 6oo yards has so improved his pace that the resulting improvement in speed and endurance has placed him in a class to which he had hitherto despaired of attai.ning. The necessity for pace is readily realised from the fact that all authorities agree that a really great half– miler should be capable of running 440 ·yards in 50 to 52 seconds, and that the first quarter in the actual race should be travelled in 55 seconds or under. It is certainly good policy to run the first quarter of a half-mile at as good speed as possible; the athlete is then enabled to ease off and get a rest for about I 50 yards before gathering all his energy for · the final sprint of approximately 300 yards. In the early stages of running, plenty of fairly slow long-distance running should be done to build up the staying powers ; later comes the sprinting practice and the · time-trials-which time-trials, by the way, should at first be run to a prearranged time-schedule, in order that the novice may become a judge of pace– which is one of the greatest essentials in medium– distance running. In actual competition, when one is called upon to