He learned that he should go his full distance not more than three times a week, and that, contrary to his impression, sprinting should receive a fair share of attention. In the end, Gerald worked out a table for his guidance as follows:
Monday, three-quarters of a mile at a fair speed.
Tuesday, a fairly fast half, followed by a few sprints of from fifty to a hundred yards.
Thursday, a fast half, a rest, and an easy three-quarters.
Friday, sprinting, ranging from a hundred to four hundred and forty yards.
Saturday, a mile and a half at a jog, finishing the last hundred at a sprint.
As, said the book, endurance was the thing to work for, by running over his distance, the miler would strengthen heart, lungs, and muscles, and also learn to regulate his breathing, and so accumulate sufficient reserve energy to enable him to increase his speed in the last one or two hundred yards of his race.
The subject of diet puzzled Gerald a good deal, for his authority recommended things which Gerald could not obtain at commons away from a training table. But in the end he established a diet list for himself; and, for fear he might forget what was on it, carried a copy with him at all times. For breakfast he allowed himself one chop, four ounces of steak or two soft-boiled eggs, one baked potato, toast or bread, milk, apple sauce, or prunes. No cream or sugar.
For dinner, soup, roast beef, lamb, mutton, or fowl, potatoes if not fried, vegetables, boiled rice, plain pudding or ice-cream, milk, toast or bread, fruit.
For supper, cold beef, lamb, mutton, or fowl, one baked potato, toast or fresh graham bread, prunes, apple sauce or a baked apple, milk.
This was not a rigorous diet, and it was mainly just about what he had been having. He cut himself off from cereals, coffee and tea, sugar and cream, pastry and candy. The book was emphatic regarding the danger of overeating, and there were times during the following six weeks when Gerald got up from the table feeling almost as hungry as when he sat down, but serene in the knowledge that he had not, in the words of his authority, “clogged his system with a mass of indigestible and unnutritive food.” He weighed himself twice a week in the gymnasium, and found that the first week he lost four pounds, in the second two, held his own the next week, and after that gained an average of a pound and a half every seven days. A hard afternoon’s work would take off a pound or so sometimes after the weather grew warm, but that pound always found its way back again. He felt better every day――save once, when, overdoing the running resulted in an attack of indigestion, that promptly disappeared when he wisely took a two-days’ rest――and went to every meal with the ability――and desire――to eat like a woodchopper. That he never transgressed the diet-list reposing in his pocket speaks well for his perseverance.