On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and Athletics

by Ralph Henry Barbour

A knowledge of this accompanied Allan all through the race, now spurring him on to determined effort, now casting him into the depths of hopelessness and despair. The meet depended upon him, and he wished with all his heart that it didn’t. For from the first instant he knew that he was not in a condition to do his best. He was aware of high-strung nerves and a general feeling of worry. For the latter there was no longer any reason; but reason or no reason, it remained. The last two days and their accompanying nights of unrefreshing slumber had had their effect. For the rest, his muscles were strong and supple, his lungs eager for their task.

Half-way around the first lap he had secured the lead, none disputing it with him, and had settled down into that apparently slow pace which makes the two-mile event look so unexciting at the first. He knew himself capable of making that pace for the entire distance and finishing comparatively fresh, but he also knew that Burns, who was coming serenely along half-way back down the length of the string, could stand it quite as well, and could probably sprint in the last quarter mile and beat him out. He decided then to increase the pace, in the hope of wearing the Robinson crack out, yet knowing that to make too fast a race would finish him up just as surely as it would Burns.

When the home-stretch was reached in that first lap Allan set his legs to faster work, and as he crossed the line and completed the eighth of his distance, supporters of the Purple shook their heads. It wouldn’t do, they murmured; he would run himself out in the first mile and a half. Even Kernahan was a little worried, though nothing of the sort showed on his face. At the end of the second lap Allan had not abated his speed a jot.

As he passed the groups around the finish and the tents, his eyes were set straight ahead, his long strides clung closely to the inner rim of the track and he was holding himself well erect. Into his cheeks the blood was creeping and dyeing them crimson, save for two disks that showed whiter and whiter as the contest wore on. Behind Allan ran an unknown Robinson man, then Hooker, then Tammen, then Burns. Conroy was dangerously far back, and, with others in his neighborhood, was showing that he didn’t approve of the pace.

Of all distances, the two miles is the hardest to run. Speed as a factor in success is largely eliminated, and endurance is the supreme test. The race requires a large courage on the part of the runner, the courage to endure. It has been said, and truly, that it takes a fast man for the sprints and a brave man for the distances. At the completion of the fourth lap it is safe to say that five of the six runners were as completely and hopelessly beaten as though the race was finishing. Their legs dragged, their heads were falling back, and their lungs were aching. But it had been the fastest half of a two-mile race ever run on Erskine Field.

Of those in the van of the long line of runners, which now stretched half-way around the oval, only three maintained their form at the beginning of the fifth lap; those were Allan, Burns, and Tammen. Save that the unknown Robinson man who had held second place at the beginning had dropped back to fifth position, the order was unchanged. Between Allan and his team-mate, Hooker, there was three yards of cinders; between Hooker and Tammen, five yards more. Back of Tammen, only a stride separating them, ran Burns, untroubled, and holding his own with great, long, easy strides.

The turf was strangely green, for the low slanting beams of the sun bathed it in their golden glow. The stands were almost deserted, for the occupants were clustered all along the home-stretch, their eager gaze following the white-clad figures on the darkening track.

If Allan’s form was still nearly what it had been at the beginning of the race, it must not be supposed that the mile had not told. Usually the two-miler finishes the half-distance in comparatively unwearied condition and faces his troubles from then on, but Allan had set a fast pace, and it had told on him, in spite of appearances. He felt as he usually did at the end of the mile and a half, and he wondered troubledly if he had not overdone it.

At the turns, now and then, a backward glance revealed the confident face of Burns, while Hooker’s tortured breathing told its own tale. Either he must last out or Robinson would take second and third positions, as well as first. But he had grown fearful of his ability to do so, and on the sixth lap he eased up on his pace. And half-way down the back-stretch he wondered if he had not, after all, made a mistake in doing so. For Burns, refusing to slow down, had bested Tammen and Hooker and was apparently striving to pass Allan. But at the beginning of the next lap, the seventh, Allan saw that the supreme struggle was not yet, for Burns had slipped in behind him, apparently content to let him set the pace for a while longer.

Then Hooker began to drop back. He had done his best, but his best was not good enough. Tammen passed him and ranged himself behind Burns, and these three, when the last lap began, were leading the field by sixty yards or more. As they swept by the finish the shouts of the spectators made a deafening roar in their ears. Allan had a dim vision of Pete leaping alongside the track at the first turn, near the tents, waving his long arms against the sunset glow and shouting unintelligible things.