Running Fast and Injury Free.pdf

RUNNING FAST AND INJURY FREE

by GORDON PIRIE (Edited by JOHN S GILBODY)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORDS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACES

GORDON PIRIE'S LAWS OF RUNNING

CHAPTER ONE - Introduction

CHAPTER TWO - Why Athletes Fail

CHAPTER THREE - Injuries, Technique and Shoes

CHAPTER FOUR - Training

CHAPTER FIVE - Weight Training

CHAPTER SIX - Diet and Vitamins

REFERENCES

FOREWORD

LETTER PUBLISHED IN THE TIMES (THURSDAY MARCH 5, 1992):

PIRIE: FORGOTTEN MAN OF ATHLETICS

Sir, Under the heading “Athletics honours Pirie” (February 26) you report the tributes paid to

the late Gordon Pirie at the memorial service in St Bride's Church, Fleet Street. As well as his

contemporaries, the athletics establishment, both past and present, and the press were well

represented.

It is regrettable that this acclaim and recognition comes now, after he has gone, and was not

expressed when he was alive. The country he served so well on the world's running tracks

thought him unworthy of an honour, while the establishment found no place for his profound

knowledge of the sport and his boundless enthusiasm. It must baffle his many admirers world-

wide that Britain offered him no official coaching post.

The argument was put forward in your sports letters (December 26) that the regular award of

honours for sporting achievements did not begin until the Sixties, after Pirie's time. This is not

correct.

In the Queen's Birthday Honours list of June 1955, Sir Roger Bannister, a contemporary of

Pirie, was appointed CBE for his services to amateur athletics, clearly for achieving the first

sub-four-minute mile the preceding year. In the same list, George Headley, the West Indian

cricketer, was created MBE.

Picking at random, one finds in the New Year's Honours of 1958 a CBE for Dennis Compton

(services to sport), a similar honour for Dai Rees (golf) and the MBE for the boxer Hogan

“Kid” Bassey (for his services to sport in Eastern Nigeria).

Rather ironically, in the same year, Jack Crump, the secretary of the British Amateur Athletics

Board, with whom Pirie was often at loggerheads, was appointed OBE for his services to

athletics.

Pirie's services to sport far exceeded those of his British contemporaries; athletes or officials.

He was a giant of his time and it was his name that drew crowds to the White City and inspired

the later Bedfords and Fosters. One suspects that he ultimately paid the price for speaking out

and for being of independent mind without the necessary Oxbridge pedigree. The answers lay

among that assembly gathered in St Bride's, and ought to be revealed.

Mrs Jennifer Gilbody

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Miss Patricia Charnet, and my mother, Mrs Jennifer Gilbody, for their

encouragement during this project. At last I have fulfilled my promise to Gordon to fine-tune,

medically validate and publish his work, though I am sure were he here he would have some

words to say; probably “about bloody time”!

Purley 2nd XI, 1946 (Gordon on right handside)

PREFACE

Gordon Pirie lived with us for several years up to his death in 1991, and had a profound effect

on us all. Of many things about Gordon, what particularly impressed was his physical fitness,

and desire for perfection with all things athletic. A good example of this was the time he did

some lumber jacking in the New Forest in Hampshire, and proudly boasted how many more

trees he cut down than men thirty years his junior. On another occasion, I inadvertently agreed

to join Gordon “for a run” on a disused section of railway track, thinking myself moderately fit.

Being half Gordon's age, I was somewhat taken aback when, in the time it took me to run one

length of track, Gordon had run three! Associated with this, which was humiliation enough,

were various comments about my running shoes and running technique (or lack of), as one

might imagine.

The original manuscript of this book was written by Gordon, in typical fashion, in 24 hours flat.

The 5¼-inch diskette on which the computer file was saved had been tucked away in a sports

bag until Gordon rediscovered it, and somehow got folded in half. As a result, it took a full

weekend to retrieve the data, and I had to cut out the magnetic media from within the diskette,

replace it into a customised new diskette, merge snippets of uncorrupted data into a single

ASCII file, and then laboriously convert the file line by line into a recognised wordprocessor

format. During this process, Gordon looked on with an enigmatic smile; he always did like to set

challenges, however impossible! Revision and editing was started shortly before Gordon's

death, and the manuscript transferred to our possession, with Gordon's express desire that the

book be published by us in order to assist the training of a new generation of runners. Overall,

to get from that early stage to the present book has taken five years of work, and has been a

sizeable project for me, albeit one which I was of course determined and happy to achieve.

As you will see, the book is highly controversial, with some radical ideas (one of the reasons it

has had to be self-published!), but I believe it is a fitting tribute to Gordon Pirie, which should

give an insight into why he was such a successful runner, and perhaps even an opportunity for

others to emulate him. The reader may be interested to know of Gordon's two other books –

“Running Wild” (published by W H Allen, London, 1961), and “The Challenge of Orienteering”

(Pelham Books Limited, 1968). In addition, the writer Dick Booth recently published a detailed

biographical account of Gordon's life, entitled: “The Impossible Hero” (Corsica Press, London,

1999), which is available from http://www.bookshop.co.uk and http://www.amazon.co.uk . I

should also mention extensive discussions about Gordon based on interviews (complete

chapters) in Alastair Aitken’s books “Athletics Enigmas” (The Book Guild Ltd., 2002) and

“More Than Winning” (The Book Guild Ltd., 1992).

Finally, I am keen to get your feedback about this book, or any reminiscences about Gordon,

and would be delighted to receive comments via fax (+44 (0)1256-765888), letter (P.O. Box

7210, Hook RG27 9GE, United Kingdom) or e-mail ( john@johngilbody.com ). Also, check

out my “Gordon Pirie Resource Center” at http://www.gordonpirie.com , where you can

download this book for free in Acrobat (pdf) format. Recommended newsgroup: rec.running.

You can find free downloadable newsreel footage of Gordon at http://www.britishpathe.com ;

other (purchasable) footage is at http://www.movietone.com and http://www.footage.net .

Happy reading!

Dr John S Gilbody (last updated 4 January 2004)

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