School Cross Country
It was called "The Sewers", because that’s what it was. A run round the sewage works, with the smell of shit forcing itself up your nostrils as you struggled for breath.

The first mile or so was relatively easy - a jog across the school field, up the main road to the farm track. That’s when you hit the mud. Mud built up on your feet like giant dinner-plates, making running nigh on impossible. I was once running behind a kid called Steve, and the next minute he'd disappeared completely in a huge muddy puddle. As far as I know, he's still there.

At the front of the course was Jimmy. Jim, so it turned out, was a county-class runner who actually enjoyed this kind of thing. He had just moved to the school, and desperately wanted to make a good impression of himself for Mr Prince. He was miles out in front. Before the race, Prinny told him the route so he wouldn’t get lost. "Down to the river, follow the path along until you get to the railway. Then follow the railway line back to school." Couldn’t be simpler than that, could it?

"...Follow the railway line back to school..."

So he did. He vaulted the thin wire fence and ran along the railway line. What the hell, the rest of the race, struggling for breath, freezing cold and soaking wet all followed him. It was like that scene from the Railway Children, only without Jenny Agutter to save our lives. Jim reached the school, and finding that the fence was now twenty feet high with no way through, kept on going.

At that point, if the local station-master hadn’t called the police, we’d have been halfway to London before we realised something was up. Police cars and vans screeched to a halt on the bridge. Boys were physically dragged up the embankment, where, not knowing what to do with us, let us run back to the school, where a proper bollocking awaited.

Prinny made us do it all again the following week. Jim ended up in Henley.

(There's a full version of this containing yet more mirth and woe which I wrote about ten years ago when I was a decent writer HERE
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:02, Reply)