The Modern Method of Training for Running, Walking, Rowing & Boxing

22 PEDESTRIANIRM. would,in tlie past time,have-weighed consider­ ably overlist., fromtlie ill-founded belief that the gift of administering punishmentwas tan­ tamount to, and equal with, the volume of muscleshown. The fallacyis, at the present time, much exploded, although even nowtoo much of the old leaven is still to be found in the system carried out by the professional trainer for the ring. The reader has only to loot back and remember the performances of the late Bill Hayes, Young Dutch Sam, Young Norley,Eobinson(the Ehouy Phenome­ non),Jack Jones, Edwardof Cheltenham, and many others; while there are ITat Langham, Jem Mace, Tom Sayers, T. Eooke, Joe Goss, and almost innumerableothers at present before the public. As regards the degeneracyof the present competitors,the following facts at once show the boot to be on the other leg. Thirty years since, six miles in one hour was consi­ dered as almostthe acmeof perfectionto which a walking paceof a man could be brought, and whenthe pedestrianin some isolatedcases was a few minutes withinthat time, his name and performance werechronicled in every sporting journal then extant as a phenomenon. Under the present codeoftraining, sevenmiles within the sixty minutes is considered only a feat for novicesand amateurs. The author, in a seven- milewalkingat Maidenhead,with a celebrated walker,James Jones,gavethe latter fifty yards start for £25 a side,and won, accomplishing the whole distance from milestone to milestone,on OLD SYSTEM OE TRAINING. 23 a measured mile, in the unprecedented and never beaten time of Fifty-two minutes and forty-tlvree seconds. Again, ten miles in the hour, at a running gait, was likewiseconsidered most extraordinary; and £50 was alwaysready near Manchester,for the menwhocould accom­ plish that feat, and it was not until rather more than twenty years since, that the first money was won from them by James Byron, webelieve, whohailed from Lancashire. With­ in comparatively a few years, eleven miles in the hour have been accomplished in one in­ stance ; although ten miles havebeen run in such time as left a good margin for more than the eleven miles to have been accom­ plished. In a spin of a mile's distance,fiveminutes was almost the utmost speed attained until within the last fewyears, whenthe auth or, in his memorablesweepstake of£26 eachwithGeorge Seward and W. Jackson, the American Deer, won in the then unprecedented time of EOTJB MINUTES AND TWENTY-EIGHT SECONDS. A few months since,the full milewas run in theshorter time of FOMI MINUTES TWENTY-TWO SECONDS AND A QUARTER , by Siah Albison,who defeated"W. Lang, of Middlesboro, by oneyard, in 1861. These instancesprove there is nofoundationfor the oldand stupidcry of degeneracy,but a very lasting and sure onefor the advancedassertion of the want of a new system of preparation to be absolutely requisite, and which, up to the present time,has enabled the cried-down, dote-