MILEAGE MAKES CHAMPIONS

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 MILEAGE MAKES CHAMPIONS

     One holiday I walked across Tasmania, 120 miles; we started at about 10 o’clock one morning carrying billies and food, as we intended to camp out. We cooked a meal and walked on, and settled to sleep about 11 p.m. We slept badly and started our next day’s walk about 5 a.m. and decided no more camping out. We finished our allotted distance by mid-day, but felt lonely after lunch, and learning there was a hotel six miles further on, we walked on to it. It had been turned into a private house and the next hotel was nineteen miles on; we arrived at midnight and were within about thirty miles of our destination; in thirty-seven hours we had done ninety miles.

     My continuity of exercise fitted me for all games, and whilst I was at school I played football for the town team, and the papers wrote me down as the best footballer in Victoria, and not among mugs. Good judges told me that our team compared favourably with the famous All Black New Zealand team. Also I was picked to bowl in a cricket match in preference to George Palmer [George Eugene “Joey” Palmer, 1859-1910, played in 17 test matches between 1880 and 1886. – P.M.], who bowled with Spofforth [Frederick Robert Spofforth, 1853-1926, “The Demon”, Australia’s first truly fast bowler. – P.M.] for Australia just afterwards. It also enabled me to win the 440 Yards and the Hurdle Race and the High Jump, and to get second in the Long Jump, Putting the Weight, and the 100 Yards (though I broke the tape and really won it). That was in the United Schools Sports of Victoria, a performance that has never been equalled. I always won the long distance swimming race at school, and the boy who was second to me swam in the town races and beat the champion of Victoria. These are some encouraging results of regular long work. I began early running the Under 12 race in the United Schools Sports for four years. I ran ten years in these sports. I gave my sons plenty of long walks early in life, and one won the Heavy Weight Schools’ boxing, put up a record for Throwing the Hammer, and stroked the Eton eight. The other was a crack skater at eight years, and a crack golfer at fourteen years of age, and bowled for a good M.C.C. team in the West Indies when about eighteen years of age. So once more, Mileage makes Champions.

    My crews have been more successful than any other crews. I used to row to Ely and back with them in the days when I began coaching again. Possibly the two lightest and least experienced crews that won the Grand were the Jesus 1885 crew [11 st. 3 lbs.] and the Thames 1923 crew [11 st. 9¼ lbs.]. Both those crews did many long rows. I used to row the 1885 crew to Ely on Monday and back to Cambridge on Saturday, and Thames did many a long row in the 1923 crew, which was the best crew of its weight I have ever seen. In the preceding winter, they used to put in twenty miles on the Sunday, a great deal of it racing other crews. My first outing on the Thames was in a Rob Roy canoe. I paddled from Putney to Henley in the day, about sixty miles, as I went up the river Wey by mistake. A week after that I walked from London to Inverness, over 600 miles.

     My longest day’s rowing was at the Bedford Regatta in 1887. I sculled and rowed in the Tub Pairs, and Fours; three races in each. I started in the first race and rowed in every other race of the day, filling in the intermediate time sculling back and getting up to the start for the next race, and I danced till 4 o’clock in the morning, putting away over thirty miles more, as we danced very fast in those days.

     My longest day’s coaching was in the eighties, probably 1885. I took one crew at 9 a.m. over the course, next at 10 also over the course, next to Clayhythe 11 to 2. Then one at 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 o’clock, all over the course, and I rowed the course and we broke the record of that day. This involved over thirty miles in the saddle, driving every crew as hard as I could. The power to do these long days all comes from plenty of long work. “Mileage makes Champions” is coming into vogue very much more. I got a letter from the Continent from a man telling me he was rowing on my book, and that he had won the 80 kilometres sculling championship.