Marathon training tip 4
I call it DOFFMORR. Like many innovative methods of training, it has its origins in the 60s. You, dear Blog, will have heard of Gerschler, Igloi, Cerutty and Lydiard with the different methods they employed to help their charges succeed on the world stage. Well in a backwater of God’s own country, in the backwater of Ingrow, the seeds of DOFFMORR were germinating. It has to be acknowledged that the government’s education policy had not a little to do with the planting of the idea. At the time, much resentment was felt by the youth of the day when the government passed legislation to raise the school leaving age from 14 to 15. The bill was rushed through parliament for obvious reasons giving schools a whole new age group to cater for. Grammar schools were OK as many of this new age grouping stayed on at school after the statuary requirement for leaving anyway. But the Secondary Moderns now had to grapple with an embittered set of kids who wanted just to leave the confines of the punishment block and start to earn money**. In those days, you could leave school on the Friday and walk into a job on the following Monday. So these kids had an axe of non cooperation to grind. And grind it they did. Ask anyone who was teaching in an inner city school at the time. These kids, pupils, students, educational customers call them what you like to be politically correct, were labelled ROSLA kids; Raising Of the School Leaving Age. Part of the reasoning behind government policy was the need to cope with the baby boom following WW 11. Many ideas were gandered to occupy this clientele for the twelve months, very little of it being constructive for or helpful to the kids. At my school, the policy was containment, pure and simple; to get them out of school so they couldn’t cause even more disruption and destruction. DOFFMORR, was our answer. Brilliant idea, I kid you not. It helped the kids develop initiative, made them self reliant, helped their skills in geography, honed their mathematical knowledge and most important, few staff were required to supervise. Today, it would be the subject of court proceedings, legal enquires, child abuse prosecutions etc if it were to be repeated now. So. The curriculum for each day went as follows. 9am to 9.30 – registration. 9.40 board the fleet of mini buses. 10.15 drop the pupils off. Where??? Ah, that was the clever bit. The kids were not told where they were to be dropped off. The idea being for them to make their own way back to school, by whatever means they could for registration at 3.45pm. What was even cleverer was the fact that the staff knew that the kids knew that the staff knew that they would not come back to school any way, especially if the drop off point was cunningly design to give easy access to the city centre. And they had a legitimate excuse to be off the premises!!! At 3.45 the register was fiddled and the staff went home. If a kid dared to make it back to school, then the following day was R.D., retribution day for the misguided child! When all the kids were about to be dropped off, that pupil was singled out and taken further afield to be deposited in the country side. No buses to catch there. They soon got the idea!!! So what has this to do with DOFMORR, Training Idea No. 4, you may ask??? Well suppose you want a 10 mile session. You get a wife, partner, uncle, aunt, brother. sister, anyone to drive you about 10 miles from home and you make your own way back home. DOFFMORR – Drop OFF, Make Own Return Route, geddit????. Better if you don’t know the drop off point intimately. Garmins are not allowed as that would spoil the session. No mobiles either but an emergency phone number allowed in case it gets too dark before you die of exposure. Eat your heart out Percy, Woldmar, Arthur and Mihaly, I thought of it first!!!
Still collecting the odd tupenny piece for my two charities Tiny Tims Children’s Centre and Newlife.
**PS. Déjà-vu as they parlays sort of, if you know what I mean .... Much like today’s workforce being told they have to do an extra couple of years to get their pension entitlement.
Trudge
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