Falling between track in the spring and cross country in the fall, summer is a time for base training. Getting out in the heat and humidity every day isn't glamorous but it's the key to successful fall racing. Still, sometimes athletes can benefit from a break from the monotony of the long, hot miles. Some coaches add variety by adding games to training--ultimate frisbee, for instance. Ultimate seems like a good way to get hurt, though. Pick-up basketball is a more efficient path to injury, but ultimate will still let you twist or tear something so that you can't run. Ask a coach how many of his athletes who have been injured actually got hurt running. The loud sigh you'll hear will tell you more than any statistic.


You could always do a Devil-Take-The-Hindmost Run, though.


In a Devil-Take-The-Hindmost Run, the last runner is taken off the track at the end of each lap. A few regular track races in Europe are staged this way to stimulate the pace. Want to lurk in the back of the pack and wait to kick? The Devil will get you. You can't loaf through the steeplechase and win it with a fast final 200 if you were removed from the race on the third lap.


In a pure Devil-Take-The-Hindmost, though, athletes are eliminated one by one until only the winner is left on the track. The details, though, seem to vary.


When I first saw a Devil-Take-The-Hindmost in Tallahassee it was the 1970s. The rules were supposed to be from the Atlanta Track Club. Moving in a tight group, the runners moved casually around the track till the front straightaway, where there was a mad dash to avoid the Devil lurking at the end of the lap. Each year, there was always someone dressed as the Devil in position to yank the hapless runners who finished a lap in last place.


The Tallahassee Devil-Take-The-Hindmost was a community run, so there was a wide range of abilities among the athletes on the track. In order to keep the pack together, there was a rule that the first runner couldnít be more than 100 meters (50 meters some years) ahead of the last runner. That worked well enough, except when the last runner slowed to a walk, or even stopped. It wasn't really a tactic, because you couldn't escape the Devil that way; it was more of a joke. The hilarity ran thin after a while.


In 2013 the Tallahassee runners adopted a set of rules from the UK. There was a two-minute limit on each lap. No one could begin the next lap until the two minutes were up, but anyone who didn't finish the lap in two minutes was elminated. Regardless of time, the Devil took the hindmost athlete at the end of each lap. It resembled and interval session, but everyone had fun, and some of the runners actually got in a decent workout.


The Devil-Take-The-Hindmost will never be an Olympic event, but in Tallahassee the event has been popular with some very good runners. Records are spotty or nonexistent for the early years, but Florida State distance runner Marc Akbar won in 2011. Not yet a state champion, Leon High's Sukhi Khosla won in 2012. Maclay assistant coach Stephen Cox outran the Devil in 2013.


Tallahassee's Devil-Take-The-Hindmost is scheduled for August 2 this year, but I'm not advocating a trip to the Capital City. If you're interested, round up a couple dozen athletes and make an appointment to meet at your local track. Horns and pitchfork are optional.

Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills

Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/

Herb Wills NorthWest Florida Reports LINK