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On Sprint Running and Training

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It may, perhaps, seem strange on my part to lay down any training or running laws for sprinters, seeing that I have never been a sprint runner pure and simple. But then, of course, even long-distance runners, as has been already hinted, have to study up the subject of sprinting on their own account. They have frequently to introduce more sprints into their long-distance runs than they particularly care about perhaps, even if they do not aspire to covering their intermittent 100-yard bursts inside even time on every occasion.

Still, a long-distance runner naturally has to cast around in search of any wrinkles which he can discover that will help him to get over the ground at top speed,. and to that end he will, if he is wise, study sprinters and their ways.

Personally, I have been pretty well favoured in this respect, as I have been privileged to tour Australia with the greatest of a11 sprint runners-A. F. Duffey-and have, whenever I had an opportunity, closely watched both his system and style.

Unfortunately, my build and natural action has prevented my being able to exactly imitate the latter when I have been called upon to “travel,” although, perhaps, this seeming misfortune has, after all, been a blessing in disguise.

I don’t know that I am abnormally deficient in natural vanity, but I am certainly unable to persuade myself that I am gifted with such extraordinary versatility as to be able to rapidly and completely change my natural action whenever I want to.

I have been described as having a somewhat low and gliding action, with the body leaning forward and the arms kept low. This I have found to be the one best suited to the stride I like to preserve, and I am inclined to fear that if I endeavoured to cultivate to perfection the tremendous stride and springing action of the ideal sprinter whenever I had need to get ahead of a man, or to join in a punishing finish, that I should thereby tend to tangle myself up.

A runner’s stride, whatever it is, is more or less of a mechanical action. He may discover that he is all wrong, is striding too short, too long, or too high, Find may, on that account, set himself to work to eradicate these defects.

He can only do this by continual hard practice, as it is more difficult at running, as at everything else, to break oneself of a fault than it is to acquire a virtue. But once the change is successfully made the new action will have become mechanical, and must remain so.

So that while I am thus debarred from giving advice on “sprinting” from any actual experience of my own, I can still do so from observation, and I suppose that you are all more or less acquainted with the proverb which says that “ lookers-on see most of the game”; and as “sprinting “ is a game that I don’t play properly, and never propose to attempt in its higher forms, I have found it to possess a special interest for me. So great an interest, indeed, that I fear that I have paid more attention to the action and system of famous sprint runners than I have to those of my rivals in my own line of business.

STARTING FOR A SPRINT.

Unlike long-distance running, the start is all important to a sprinter. If he loses any advantage there he will have to work more than ‘double tides later on to make it up. Besides which, as I have said, weight counts for a good deal in these very short-distance races, and in order to get a. pull out of your poundage instead of being pulled back by it, you must launch your body as far and as fast forward as you can at your first spring off.

If there were no other reason for advocating the “all fours “ attitude of starting for a sprint this point should alone carry the day in its favour. But there are many others, first and foremost of which is the steady position it enables a runner to assume when on the mark-a very important consideration, indeed, if one does not want to have to pay the penalty of getting prematurely over the line.

Duffey, when settling down for a sprint race, would scrape a hole two or three inches deep in the cinders for his right foot so as to make a bank to push off from directly the pistol was fired. He would then rest on his hands and knee” waiting for the “get ready °’ warning. At this he would arch his body a trifle, resting his weight chiefly on his left toes and hands, with the right leg free and bent, waiting with every muscle screwed up for
the push. As soon as the pistol went he had gone, shooting forward as if from a gun, with a sort of seven-leagued stride, which seemed to get faster and longer until the tape was reached.

I am sorry now that I never measured Duffey’s stride, for at times it must have been phenomenal.
That is the whole secret of running any distance up to 100 yards. Get off with a burst, and burst more every step. You have no pace or other considerations to bother you, but have simply to try for record every time. Simple, isn’t it?
The only other points to remember are the need for

keeping the body steady and straight, the inadvisability of swinging your arms high, and the folly of throwing your head back in order to study the stare. They aren’t visible as a rule at that time of day, and if you look up at the sky you won’t be able to see where you are going, and may blunder into someone else.

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