…it’s undeniably difficult to look at my physical appearance today and believe that at one time (read, ‘fifty years ago’) I displayed certain athletic prowess… I’ve bored yeez before, that as a teenager, I played as a winger, then centre forward with Third Lanark Football Club in Glasgow, when that outfit was part of the Scottish First Division… a year or two prior to that, while still at school, yours truly was prompted by an over-enthusiastic gym master to enter for the running events at the Paisley Police Juniors Athletics meeting… compared to my peers back then, I was reckoned to be quite quick… hence the later introduction to the aforementioned Third Lanark as a ‘flying winger’…
…however, some of that reputation, coupled I believe with a total misunderstanding from the gym teacher as to what events best suited my sprinting talents, led to my being put forward for the 800-metres race… I recall it as yesterday… back then, there was none of yer fancy Nike spiked speed shoes… a pair of tightly laced ‘bumpers’ graced the feet… and oh, the shorts I had on the day of the meet were a size too big… that was addressed by the use of a ’snake-belt’… those of yeez of a certain age will remember the ‘snake-belt’— an elasticised thing with an ’S’-shaped hook to hold it clipped together… and yer next budding Olympic performer was ready for the starting gun… I had already competed earlier that day in the 100-metres sprint, and won easily, carrying home later the Police Bowl Trophy… buoyed by that, when the starter fired the gun for the 800-metres, I went belting away from the field like the proverbial bat out of hell… within 30 seconds, I was fifty metres ahead of the rest of them… pacing, Mabel?… nob’dy had told me about pacing… I think the gym master was home doing his nails the night they gave that particular lesson… needless to say, it didn’t take long for the rest of the tortoise pack to catch up with the ‘Govan Hare’… the human frame is not built to sprint flat-out, non-stop for 800 metres… nor even 400 metres… by the time the race was over, Master Gallacher, the proud owner of the 100-metres sprint title, crawled in, a far distant, and exhausted, last in the 800 metres…
…pacing, Authors, pacing…. it’s as relevant to yer scribbling as it is to careening round a race track… mark my WURDS… these days, I’ll settle for a taxi, thanks … see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!