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

School Sports (part two) - Athletics cross-country.

Athletics term kicked off with a cross country race, where the whole school competed in three different age groups, and on different courses - I hate long distance running!! Standards were awarded for the finishing times, grades A, B and C, which equated to 4, 3 and 2 points in the "standards competition", which was a term-long inter-house competition. In the rest of the competition we had 6 Field and Track events to complete, our choice, but you had to do at least 2 Field or Track in your selection. These were graded A, B and C, (3, 2 and 1), so your maximum points tally could be 22 - 4 from cross country and 18 from the rest. My best tally was 21 - yes, cross country never yielded me my A standard!
What was frustrating for me with cross country is an inability to pace myself, I used to either burn myself out before half distance and then stagger home, or start too slowly and have too much energy left at the end, after finding out I hadn't run fast enough!! The runners who achieved their standards in the main event at the beginning of term didn't have to do it again - they already had their points - but the rest of us could try it again around 4 more times throughout the term. In the early years I was back in the pack in these additional races, with not much hope of achieving my A, but in the final two years I was the pacemaker as one of the top athletes still in the hunt for an A - and I never did manage to get the pace right! We didn't have stop watches or anything like that, and many of us ran barefoot or in ordinary trainers, so it was all down to trying to work out the pace in your head. The course took us around the very large school estate, through pine plantations, through or over gates (I used to vault them to save time), round granite rocks, up and down Monkey Hill (there was a pretty steep path and a challenge to everyone, but I tried to run it, where most walked), and then down dirt school roads to the athletics field where we had to do a circuit to the finish. My best efforts died on the final lap - our athletics coach used to stand at the finish line with a stopwatch, and as the standard ran down he used to raise his floppy white hat with 10 seconds to go, and drop it as the time ran out. I once made it to the final 80 yards straight - and walked off as the hat dropped, much to the disgust of my Housemaster! - and once got to within a couple of yards before he called time! That was to be my last attempt, as he wouldn't let me try again as he felt it was jeopardising my hurdle training!
Our school was multi-racial, which was unusual in Rhodesia back then as all state-run schools were whites only, but there were one or two "private" (in the UK these would be called "public" schools) that also had open-door policies. It meant that when we competed in any sport at state schools we could only send white participants, but that events at ours were always multi-racial. So we hosted a major inter-schools cross-country competition every year - and boy could some of these guys run! If memory serves there were around 12-15 schools competing, with 8 runners in each of three age groups. Each school was appointed an "escort" per age group who showed the runners the course, took them to meals, and collected their times at the end of the event. I recall being the escort for Waddilove seniors one year, and they spent all the time talking in Shona, so I never understood a word! The first 5 finishers in each age group scored points in the final tally, and the school with the lowest score won - Waddilove were one of the schools that produced incredible runners every year, and I think that year all 5 senior scorers finished in the top 10!