School sports (part three) - Athletics

My final year at boarding school our athletics coach recognised that I had a certain talent for Hurdling so I became what was called a "school athlete" - this meant that we didn't take part in the usual sports programme during athletics term but were expected to attend formal training sessions. The "usual" programme entailed participation in the Standards Competition, mentioned in an earlier post. There were sporting activities every afternoon all year round - Monday, Wednesday and Friday it was one session after tea, but Tuesday and Thursday it was all afternoon, including a break (and sometimes sport change) for tea. There was a timetable, I am afraid I do not recall the details, but you could go from event to event trying to achieve your "standard" in the different disciplines. Many of these "venues" were manned by pupils, rather than staff, who were occupied with technical events that required, say, timekeeping, so a couple of pupils would monitor the high jump armed with a clipboard and measuring equipment and record the results. Cross country "standards" competition races were arranged a few times a term as well, in order for pupils to try and improve their standards, and as a school athlete you weren't expected to compete in these (though I participated a couple of times to try and get my A) - compulsory for everyone else who didn't have the A standard. 
So I used to go down to the athletics field every afternoon for "training", and was put with the "sprint" training group. It entailed a lot of running! We used to walk, jog then sprint round the 400 metre track for several circuits, then do "start training" - lining up as if for a race and then respond to the starting pistol, but only run 20 metres or so to practice starts. The coach felt that I was possibly anticipating the gun, and false started me several times, till he realised that I simply had fast response times, which I needed as my sprinting speed was not great! 
After a couple of weeks of this training I asked him about my specialised hurdle training, and he admitted that he knew little about the discipline, so felt that I was best suited to simply work on my sprinting! I knew that hurdling was more about technique than simple speed, which was obvious as I was easily beating most of the much faster sprinters over the barriers, so I asked if I could devise my own programme, though I would continue to do some training with the sprinters - and fortunately he agreed. We had a "middle" level athlete who was an excellent hurdler, and who had received some proper training prior to coming to our school, so I joined up with him, and some afternoons we could be found doing (painful!) stretching exercises, and training over barriers one notch lower than our racing height (to get low down and more efficient!). He was also, incidentally, a very good sprinter, so much of the time I could be found training alone, but my times continued to improve so the coach didn't mind!
When we attended athletics events at other schools I travelled along as "first reserve", but never got to compete, though I ended the year, and my time at boarding school, as the third best hurdler (one of the top two was a top-notch sprinter so didn't compete as a hurdler for the school), let down only by my sprinting speed, as I had the best hurdling technique and generally used to reach the final barrier ahead of everyone else!

This was the 180 metre hurdle race on Sport's Day over lower hurdles