Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/210

Rh Now in setting your weight goes forward on your fingers and the ball of your left foot. Don't try to put your body over the line; only the head and shoulders. Now, when the pistol goes off, don't give a jump as though you were going to play leapfrog all the way down to the tape. Let yourself fall forward naturally, as you're bound to when you lift your hands, and then run. That's the whole idea of that start. You're falling forward and you run to keep from going on your face. Bring your rear foot forward on a straight line, raise your body slowly—don't jerk your shoulders up—and get your stride in the first three or four steps at the most. Don't try for long steps. Take short ones, at least at first until you learn to lengthen them without throwing yourself off. When you're running the hundred yards, fellows, about fifty per cent. of it depends on the way you get off your mark. Races are won or lost right there. The idea is to get away quick, but get your stride at once. Now, then, watch me and see how I do it."

That, thought Perry, as his gaze followed Lanny's bare legs twinkling down the path, simplified the business. No one had told him that it was the falling forward of his body that gave him speed in getting away from the mark. He had been, in fact, struggling against that very thing, try-