Middle Distance Races.—Speed wins short-distance races; endurance wins long-distance races, but a combination of each is needed in the medium distance contests.
Long Distances.—The training for long-distance races needs patience and endurance, for the tax upon the runner is great. Boys should not compete in long distances. No one under eighteen years of age should run a mile. The method of training is to run a quarter, or half a mile, according to the strength of the runner, and then each day to increase the distance or to run the same distance at a greater speed. Gradually by this process the lungs, the heart, and the muscles are strengthened until feats hitherto impossible become easy. In a long-distance race judgment must be exercised whether to go the distance rapidly and trust to endurance or to run warily and win by a spurt at the end, when it may be that your opponent is exhausted.
The Long Jump.—Speed is an important element in this feat, more important indeed than the spring. Experts take a run of from a hundred to two hundred feet as though they were running a sprint race and are going at their highest speed when they rise from the ground. When they are coming to the ground again they thrust their legs forward as far as they can, and so gain a foot or even more. This needs practice, however, for if the leaper loses his balance and falls backward his jump does not count. To start from the mark also needs practice, and one of the methods of mastering this feat is to run slowly to a point about nine paces short of the starting place. In training this point may be marked by a piece of paper. Then sprint from the paper to the starting place. Experts are able to jump twenty-four feet, and a leap of twenty-two is excellent, but not many can hope to reach these lengths.
The High Jump.—Here the athlete begins his run to the centre of the bar slowly, then he increases his speed a little, finishing with a quick run and a bound. The spring is taken in something like a crouching position with the head drawn in, but in the air the shoulders are lifted and the arms and legs jerked upwards. As the jumper crosses the bar he shoots out his legs, raises his shoulders still higher, and twists his body until he faces downwards. In fact he is then nearly horizontal, and an amateur champion of the world has likened his position at this stage to that of an arrow crossing a bow. When he comes to the ground he faces the bar. Some jumpers rise from the right foot, some from the left. The young athlete should find for himself which method suits him best. It is usual to take the leap as far in front of the bar as the bar is from the ground. Thus, if the bar is four feet high the leap would begin four feet from a point on the ground directly under the bar. The run usually begins twelve good paces from the bar, and consists of one bound after another, concluding with three short energetic ones. Then comes the spring from a crouching position. If the start is from the right foot, this foot should be almost parallel to the bar, and the heel of this foot should be the last to leave the ground. A run would carry you far, but in this feat it is the vigorous spring which carries you high. There are those who can jump more than six-feet high in this way, but they are among the champions.
CHAPTER IV.
HOCKEY AND INDIAN CLUBS
Hockey.—Hockey is a game which has become very popular in England during the past few years. It is generally believed to be a southern form of the Highland game of shinty, the great game of the clansmen in years gone past, and still played in many of the northern glens, notably on the Dumbartonshire side of Loch Lomond. The hockey of the North is not played according to any scale of points, the winning team being that which secures most goals; in the South, where it is frequently played on ice as well as on terra firma, certain marks of merit are awarded, after the style of Rugby Union football.
The modern hockey stick is to some extent an artificial contrivance after the style of the driver or play club of golf. Indeed, to golf it bears some little semblance, and strangers frequently confound the two pastimes. The Scottish school-boy, when hockey comes on in its turn with other recreations of the playground, sets out for the woodlands with a strong, sharp pocket-knife. He examines carefully all the hedge-rows to see if there is any young plant which has a natural turn at the end. If he can find such with a three feet shaft and a four-inch crook at the end he sets to work there and then, and in due time his “shinty” or hockey stick is pruned and ready for the game. The full-grown Highland player will possibly provide himself with a very heavy oak sapling, and with this he will strike powerful strokes, with his right hand, or both hands if required, when in a close contested maul or fray in front of the goal. These naturally-grown clubs have more spring in them than those of artificial make, but unless they are carefully bound with cord the head is apt to give after a little hard play.