All must agree that running, walking, and leaping are the most simple and genuine of all competitions. When a Derby is won it is always a point for argument whether the greater credit is due to the horse or to the jockey; and when Cambridge is badly beaten over the Putney course there is always the critic to say that the Oxford weights were better arranged, that erratic steering threw away the race, or that the losers were under-boated. The athlete who wins a big race owes nothing to his apparatus, and his success can only be due to his own excellence or his opponent's shortcomings. And even if running be more unsociable than rowing, it has the counterbalancing advantage for the individual that his success cannot possibly be ascribed to others. In every eight on the river there is said to be one duffer, and every one of the eight can be certain that someone considers him to be the man. In athletics a 'duffer' can only win by the help of a handicap; the cause of his success is then evident, and if he gets the prize he takes little credit with it.

When the athlete has got a pair of the best shoes, a zephyr, and a pair of silk or merino drawers (called by courtesy knickerbockers) just not coming down to the knee, so as to leave that useful portion of the leg free, he has got all the stock-in-trade required to win half-a-dozen championships. The science of athletics, then, consists in the scientific use of the limbs; the tools of the athlete's trade are the thews and muscles of his own body, which God has made and man cannot refashion. Of the athlete, therefore, it can be said, more than of any other sportsman, nascitur non fit. Much, no doubt, can be done by training and practice, but no amount of either can make a man with small thighs a sprinter, or a man with a short 'fore leg,' that is leg between knee and ankle, a high jumper. To acquire excellence in these branches of sport demands knowledge of how to utilise the natural advantages of the body. Many men possessed of great natural excellences have, by a careful system of self-exhaustion, neutralised their gifts; some others have also within our knowledge appeared almost to have acquired fine form from mere practice; but these latter are very rare examples.

Of runners and the art of running - in so far as there is an art in running - we propose in the ensuing pages to offer some reflections and reminiscences, without actually going so far as to elaborate an actual manual of training. Of books on training there are already numbers, more or less valuable and more or less harmful, but books on training must always tend to fail in proportion as they are elaborate, because the end to be acquired is perfectly simple - to become hard and muscular, and at the same time to be in perfect and robust health, and sound in every organ, and no rigid rules can possibly suit all persons alike. Just as every man over thirty should, it is said, be his own doctor, so every man who has been a couple of seasons 'on the path' should be able to train himself. At the same time there are certain general rules which help a man to attain his best form, and these we shall not fail to enumerate.

Ready to start.

First of all, then, before a man begins to train for any event of any kind he should have a good substratum of health and strength to start upon. If the would-be athlete is very badly out of condition, and fat and flabby from laziness and high living, it will do him no harm to take a Turkish bath to start with. Some smart five-mile walks followed by a good rubbing down with a rough towel on returning will soon make him fit to begin his training, if he has in the meantime kept regular hours and lived on a modicum of good healthy food of the kind to which he is usually accustomed. Without this preliminary care, not only will the runner get stiff and jaded by beginning violent exercise too quickly, but he will incur the greatest possible chance of straining or snapping a muscle, and thus placing himself hors de combat for a season. Granting, however, that our novice is, from the effects of football, walking, tennis, or cricket, in fair ordinary condition, we will follow his course through the different branches of athletics.

And first as to sprinting.

Sprinting, or Sprint-running, is the technical name given to the running of those short distances over which a man can spurt or 'sprint' at top speed without a break. The rough-and-ready experience of the last generation, which almost stereotyped the distances and conditions of racing, decided that 300 yards was the limit of sprinting distance, and that the next distance for racing purposes - the quarter of a mile - was something sui generis, and distinct from sprinting. Probably for the generality of runners the old and popular division of distance was right, but those who saw Myers and Phillips race for the English championship at Aston in 1881, or saw the American crack win his quarter-mile handicap at Lillie Bridge in 1884, when he ran round his field and came in a winner in 48 4/5 seconds, can hardly help arriving at the conclusion that with some phenomenal runners a quarter is only a sprint 'long drawn out.' But whatever be the limit of sprinting powers, sprint-running, which is always the most popular of all kinds of athletic sports with the public, is certainly something entirely different both in the action and in the essentials of success to the running over longer distances.

In sprinting, the front muscles of the thigh, which bring the leg forward, are the most important factors for speed, as it is on the rapid repetition of the stride that the main result depends; in running of longer distances the back muscles of the thigh, which effect the propulsion, bear the chief strain. Both sets of muscles are of course used in every race, but the longer the distance the less important the front muscles become. And here we may perhaps give vent to a reflection which must often occur to those who consider a meeting of foot-races far superior in point of interest to a set of cycling matches. At a cycling meeting the same man who wins the mile race will probably win the five or ten mile races, and may even, like H. L. Cortis during his time, hold all the records from one to fifty miles. The reason is simply that, although there are differences of degree in stay-ing powers with cyclists, the same muscles are used for every race, while between the sprinter and the miler there is a difference not of degree but of kind. At a meeting of foot-races there is an infinite variety of different kinds of excellence.