Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

In these days of cosseted lads at school, from my window I can see a university sports field which is given over to a full size running track and two rugby pitches. At the present time running is the only thing happening but it's interesting to note that 90% of the lads out running are bare chested. I would also say that about 50% are running bare foot. The track is grass. The girls do not of course run topless but the same number of them run bare foot.

I guess they are just doing what comes naturally.

My grammar did distance running at school once weekly for half the year Sep - Mar and it was done with shirts firmly off our backs and a completely exposed chest and body above the waistline. Don't ask me why, when accompanying teachers wore the school logo'd vest we already had too. Only if it was a hard frost could we do different. Then in the spring & summer we'd do track & field and wear vests more often than not. Work that one out!

I went to state schools until I was 12 and then private school after that until I was 18, latterly covering the years from 1984 until leaving in 1990. It was quite the changeover from the casual ways before 12 and the focussed disciplined ways after that, and PE could end up being on a par with a military style drill in certain circumstances. We had it three times each week.

Cross country running varied dependent on who took us out. Whilst we had standard PE vests for outside, when we got older after the first two years (at 14) we began running without any tops for anyone nearly all the time with our teachers and got used to leaving them hanging in the lockers. School had a weather screen just outside the PE office window and sometimes one of us got sent to check the reading. My main outdoors PE teacher Mr.Symes considered anything above 45 degrees fahrenheit to be fine and healthy for running with a bare chest. That was well under 10 degrees centigrade and he never bothered worrying about the wind direction or the chill factor. It could be very bracing on a thin teenager with minimal body fat, which was most of us really. Nobody seemed overweight in the late 80s.

We ran cross country all year round and did one every week in one of our lessons. You might think that running around outdoors with no shirt on in colder weather was really dreadful, and at times it could be. But unlike some teachers our Mr. Symes would keep abreast of us in the main pack and be the same as us so there were no complaints. You never argued with our teachers anyway. Inside the main gym I'd say half our lessons were shirts off. Some like that kind of thing, some don't. I was ambivalent.

Far worse for me was running cross country during summer. We would run a similar length to winter no matter how hot it got and this could be a bit more uncomfortable than getting a bit fresh in the colder seasons. Running, even with no shirt on, in 30 degree heat with the sun belting down or even in cloudy humid conditions at that heat level was not ideal. I could sweat out some serious amounts of salt and was often dripping so much my shorts were soaked through from the bodily run off. The same went for everyone else, some more than others. Given the chance I would have always opted to take a cross country run shirtless in the colder chill because nobody ever had a problem running in that but there were one or two medical issues with heatstroke and asthma doing so in summer that I saw happen. At about this time there was the start of the ozone layer issue and skin awareness and some of us would bring a sun factor cream for our faces and shoulders and share a dab with others. Two of the boys I used to be in school with in the late 80s have had skin cancers on their backs removed in recent years and I have been left wondering if they were directly caused by too much sun exposure from schooldays when we were outside with no shirts on, even though it would only have ever been for an hour or maybe two per week. I have quite a few moles I never had as a youngster that make me wonder if they have a link to school PE in the sunlight.

Coming in from cross country in winter we always had a proper hot shower awaiting us all but in summer we had an almost cold one to cool our core body temperatures down if it was a hot day. Happy days.

Cross country running barefoot I think isn't as popular as it once was. I ran cross country barefoot like Bernard and Owens minority runners but unlike Bernard we all had the choice although encouraged to run with bare feet. After one bad experience of getting pumps so muddy they might as well be binned or if you had one run and you lost a pump then the barefoot option seemed quite good and once you've tried it you know it's actually alright and not bad or too cold at all to run cross country on a grass or mud surface barefoot

The bit Owen put about connecting with the earth is bang on the money for me. Summer games outside on grass in both my lower schools were always barefoot just like inside and it wasn't until I got to my upper school that I began wearing trainers but because I'd done it without so much at my lower schools when we did outside athletics on grass in summer I deliberately walked out one day barefoot holding my trainers and asked if I could leave them off and did so quite frequently. It caught on and a small group did like me too and preferred it that way. I could often win races against trainer wearing competition so it was no disadvantage to me. I know some people find it odd and others hate to be so and even get fearful of the thought of being asked to do something like that, certainly in school, but I was fine and positive with it.

I think it might be a bit like people who enjoy swimming with nothing on saying they are at one with nature. Never done anything like that but when I did have swimming lessons in school if I could have had the chance to swim like that I would have fancied it just for the feel of it. Obviously that was a no go area. In no way do I consider myself an exhibitionist or a show off, a term Robbie's teacher used back at him which I thought was a really strange thing to say.

I never ran barefoot at school but I do remember a British runner from the 1960s, Bruce Tulloh, who almost always ran barefoot. He was a serious competitive distance runner (Commonwealth Games certainly) and a sub four minute miler.

Good old public information films like the foot on a bottle one listed by Brian. Why did they fall out of fashion? They used to scare kids and adults witless and spread fear of just about anything. How come they never made a public information film about the dangers of male comprehensive school PE teachers who sent you out in the depths of winter on these miserable frozen and wet group runs with so little on designed to do their best to bring on the flu or pneumonia. OK so I'm deliberately being a bit melodramatic but I think many will catch my drift here.

It's an eye opener what some people chose to do at times. Over the past 20 years since I left school I've regularly gone back to oversee long distance/cross country running events associated with my old school and other schools either at it or near it as a hi-viz human course marker on a voluntary basis as I enjoyed this kind of thing when at school myself. What I noticed from the very first one I ever did is that there are a small minority of runners at these events who actually choose to discard any running shoes and instead connect to the earth direct with their feet. Quite a few girls do it, not just boys. This surprised me when I first saw it one wet winter day in early 2002 as this girl came running past me completely barefoot and both feet and ankles solid with mud. I did a double take infact. Shortly after another runner came by much the same. There must have been a couple of hundred runners and maybe four or five like that on that day. Subsequently the pattern has seemed to repeat itself at other events I've stood at, a tiny minority make that their choice. Yet when I ran cross country quite competitively in school 25 years ago or so nobody ever ran like that and based on what Robbie said the reaction was I can but wonder what my own teachers would have answered back to a similar request. Knowing my school as I do I think they'd have said go for it.

As a choice fair enough but I'm not sure I can agree it's acceptable for a PE teacher who is likely in his trainers to tell the class to get outside running here there and everywhere in their bare feet at any time of year, especially in colder winter conditions. I'm not sure what I would have made of such a demand if it had been made of me but I feel I would have pushed back against it. I can't see any seriously great benefits other than maybe avoiding trainer rubbing and blistering but I can see the potential for sharp object injury with nothing on.

Just go out on your nearest footpath or road surface that might look smooth enough and yet with nothing on your feet what lies beneath you as you touch it suddenly feels rather rough and far from comfortable. I base this on walking in my socks across the road to a nearby house once or twice, never mind my completely unclad feet.

Chris - I've never heard any-one refer to our lack of footwear for cross country as being sadistic - it was just the way we did it and we got on with it. There were far more complaints (not in front of teachers) about being "made to" learn Latin or being forced to use log tables instead of slide rules than about our somewhat sparse p.e. kit. I was not aware of any injuries - if there had been any I'm sure the school would have thought again.

Brian - there were certainly benefits for us to run barefoot. As I said before the muddy nature of the course would have meant our footwear coming off our feet and remaining in the mud - much simpler to not wear any shoes. Another big advantage for us was not having to clean plimsolls that would have got wet through and covered in mud. At the time it really wasn't a problem to run barefoot - I couldn't do it know but children's feet tend to be tougher than those of adults.

Robbie - I'm sorry you weren't allowed to experience the freedom of running barefoot - I'm sure you would have enjoyed it. Teachers did go out sometimes but never with my group so I'm not sure what they would have worn - probably more than we did. We followed an older boy the first couple of times to get used to the route. He would probably have been a sixth former and was, of course, dressed the same as we were. Opinions about kit were not sought by or expressed to teachers - we just followed the instructions.

Bernard thanks. So you ran cross country with both nothing on your feet or up top. Can I ask if your teachers at the time ran with you and if they did it like that too and was it imposed on all of you regardless of opinion? Three and a half miles is a long way to run like that. I'd have liked to have given that kind of running a go at least once but as I said my teacher at the time refused my request quite sharply and considered me to be showing off and wasting his time with stupidity, but I did mean it.

Chris Wendle, not sure what to make of anyone drawing such direct attention to your differences like that. I bet that looked dramatic though. I ofetn found myself drawn to observing my fellow friends feet in the changing room or when not in trainers for inside games lessons. I was aware I was on the smaller side, although I wasn't a short person.

Finally Brian I don't think your fears are anything to have beaten yourself up about and they are not so uncommon as you probably reckon. One of my schoolfriends went to judo classes as a kid to help his confidence and it worked wonders.

Wendle,

I can sympathise a bit there. I had size 10s at that age in school, still do, and felt my feet were huge at the time. I didn't notice any effect on what I did though. Now and again when we got told to remove trainers and socks I got the kind of feelings some say they did with getting their tops off. Lots of people rattle on about their shirtless anxiety from school p.e lessons at senior school level but not so many about their feet anxiety which I'm sure is a thing too with some isn't it? Perhapos it's easier to admit a dislike for being shirtless rather than shoeless.

I cannot believe you actually wanted to run outdoors with nothing on your feet at all Robbie and asked your teacher if you could do it like that. He must have thought you were mad. How weird he thought of your request as showing off. If my teacher had asked me to do that outside I'd have refused and rather taken a few whacks of his plimsoll that he liked to direct at us sometimes as a missile aimed at us or a full on whack job as I mentioned last time. There was an advert on many years ago with a boy running along a beach that was shown regularly. I think as a public information film, about litter I think. It suddenly stopped as his foot was about to step down on a broken bottle poking out of the sand that he hadn't seen, leaving the resultant horrible injury to viewer imagination. I can see no benefit at all to be had from running outside with no footwear for cross country or even shorter lengths.

I've actually found the film I was writing about, it's from 1973.

https://youtu.be/0bU1varNCkY

Robbie - you've asked about running with big feet. You are right. I had size 14 feet by the age of 15 and I often found I was clumsy while running fast athletics or longer cross country and my teacher did pass comment one time. I do also remember being very self conscious about it, especially inside the gymnasium getting them out with gym class being a barefoot requirement for everyone and I had my teacher in gym one day stick mine next to a couple of boys with the smallest size for a comaprison. One was I think a size 4 or 5, with me nine or ten full sizes bigger at 14 and I wanted their smaller feet and one wanted my bigger feet. We should have met halfway on a size 8 or 9 would have been perfect in my mind like most of the others. It was done with humour but I still found it a bit unfair to do that as it was just the kind of thing to give kids in formative years one hell of a complex. I still think mt feet are far too big and the anatomical myths around that kind of thing are myths for anyone wondering. What is the ideal size anyway?

We ran cross country only in autumn and winter, in shorts and a vest. I can't believe some were made to do that outside barefoot at any time of the year, goodness that was sadistic wasn't it. No extra layers allowed over our legs or tops. Not sure why it stopped by spring really but we went on to do other things and shorter running distances. Big feet made hurdling very tricky for me I also know that and I could never quite manage it very well without knocking every other hurdle over or coming to a crashing halt as soon as I started or halfway.

Sean - your experience was very similar to mine. I was not very good at any aspect of p.e. and hated team games as I disliked letting my team down. For outdoor games the better football players practised separately leaving the less able to play various games involving a football or go out on a cross country run. In theory we ran one week in three but all the less able section would sent out on a run if our pitches were waterlogged. In addition the whole year group would be sent out if the ground was frozen or covered in snow - This did not happen very often.
Like you I always preferred cross country to team games - I may have been in the minority but I'm not sure.
I remember talking while running a few times but usually I was immersed in my own thoughts only to be jolted back into reality when I trod on a sharp stone I had not noticed,

Justin - I think not wearing a shirt at all for cross country was probably better than having to take it off part way round and tie it round your waist or tuck it in your shorts. I'm sure that would have wound me up too.
Our school's p.e. department believed in uniformity of kit so we wore just shorts all year round. This was, of course, before many homes had central heating or double glazing so people in general were used to a wider variation in temperature at home. Our school, on the other hand, had a very efficient heating system which resulted in most of the building being uncomfortably hot for most of the winter. It was quite a relief to get outside and cool off.
I don't think we were too bothered about trying to keep clean - any-one who did would probably have had difficulty keeping up and still got pretty muddy. I remember watching some very muddy water going down the drain in our showers and the remains of the mud on my feet coming off on my towel.

Robbie - we did all p.e. barefoot and shirtless - this was back in the 60s. Our cross country route was probably about three and a half miles long. The first bit was up a sloping track which was very rough with a lot of stones of varying sizes. This was probably the toughest part of the course especially the first few times we ran it. Once I got used to it there was no problem and I think this was pretty much the case for the rest of the runners.
There was then a short section of pavement and a road to cross to get to the area of open parkland for the route proper. This took us along various footpaths some of which were dry and stony and others which could get very muddy. We then returned to the school grounds via another route which involved a benign tarmac footpath along a residential road.
We could run straight through the muddiest parts in our bare feet without having to worry about plimsolls coming off our feet and being left in the mud as would undoubtedly have happened if we had been wearing any. Also, muddy feet can be cleaned much more easily than plimsolls caked in mud. Not wearing shoes or shirts meant that the only item of clothing that needed washing was our shorts - I'm sure my mother wasn't the only one to appreciate that!

Every moment in school PE that I was doing x-country running was a positively joyful experience because it meant for that lesson I wasn't being thrown into either an overly competitive game of football or rugby on the playing fields, both which I simply hated so very much. I'd take running side by side with others, even having a converstion while breathlessly doing it any time, even if I was wet through, out of puff and sweating bucketfuls and splattered with muddiness. I still remember the sense of relief I felt when we got told we were going running. I could tell I was often in the minority with that?

In our younger year groups we often had some sixth form prefects join us for x-country and be with us and it was like bossy older brothers.

Are there any others here who would have taken x-country running every time over football and rugby or who had a similar attitude to me? I was fairly okay at running anyway I have to admit.

Bernard there's much I can relate with there. My own two teenage boys both went to private school during the past decade and have done cross country running. The big difference however was what they wore, in the autumnal and wintery months they were kitted out like they were going on an arctic expedition just for a couple of miles run close to school for a few minutes. Big clunky trainers, thick long socks up to the knee, quite lengthy shorts or even full length jogging bottoms, and multiple layers up to, with long sleeves. All bought by me of course. Most of it got filthy and needed endless washing.

But when I once told them just how I did this back in school in the 1970s they not only looked on in abject horror but a sense of pure disbelief too. because there wereso many times I lost count when we got out there on lengthy runs in basic shorts, trainers with no socks quite often and the bit that neither my own two could quite believe, that I ran around cross country having completely and utterly stripped to the waist even in quite cold weather sometimes over autumn, even winter and chilly spring days. Rain or shine., made no real difference. There was no point making a fuss about it whether you were worried about being cold, or just shy, or both. One of mine said he just couldn't do that.

It was always down to what individual teachers wanted. We had one who took us outside shirted up for cross countries and often told us to take them off as we were about to start or halfway through when we'd warmed up, and then we had to tie our tops around our waists or tucked into our shorts hanging off us which wound me up a bit at the time.

It was the muckiest thing we did in school during wet weather that's for sure. The mess I got in and saw others like had to be seen to be believed. Even if you tried to keep clean as possible it was a forlorn hope some days. We really got put through the grind and my PE teachers seemed to choose some mucky places including running through a new building development at the time. Some of the builders used to look on in amusement at some of us school lads going by. Even a full on four minute shower couldn't quite shift all the filth we came back into school with sometimes and I remember this dark brown water puddling under our feet, god knows how it never blocked the plumbing at times.

l had always assumed the photo was posed for the photographer and they had neither just set off nor just returned. There are six faces looking directly at the camera, no jostling for position and the captain happens to be in the lead which would not necessarily be the case.

Our school cross country runs were entirely along pavements through suburban and semi-rural areas so there was little chance of returning mud-spattered. l suppose it was called cross country because road running was not a well-known sport in those days before being popularised by the London marathon.

Bernard, you ran shoeless cross country runs in school? How far like that? What were the benefits and also the drawbacks?

I remember watching Zola Budd doing track running like that in I think it was 1984, possibly the Olympics that year it must have been. It made a bit of a media splash I think and an impression on me, but going into school not too long after seeing that I actually asked my games teacher in the fourth form if I could run the track, hurdle and cross country in my bare feet. He was having none of it though and refused to let me do that and actually accused me of attempting to show off!

I have modest male UK size 6's and often wondered if that was more advantageous running rather than those with whopping size 12's.

Ross - I too remember coming back from cross country runs with muddy feet, ankles and legs - the mud often got up as far as our shorts and even our backs. However, I also remember running on the dried out mud in the warmer months - this included the first couple of times we were sent out before we fully understood the benefits of running barefoot. We probably came back relatively clean on those occasions but rather more out of breath than the lads in the photo - they don't look as though they have gone very far.
As you say it could be quite cold to start with but we usually warmed up fairly quickly.

To Declan on 22nd April 2022 about a caning for having an opinion.

I had a hot headed middle aged PE chap in 1975 who chastised me for simply not running cross country to the time he'd set me and being much slower. For that 'crime' I got a couple of unbelievably hard whacks from his enormous 'punishment plimsoll' as us in his class called it, one on the back of my bare legs and the other on my backside when he called me over in the changing room as I got ready to shower. It really hurt and reddened my skin up. A summary beating for running a couple of minutes slower and being a straggler holding things up. He was a bit handy with the plimsoll and threw it at boys as well as walloping every now and again for very minor misdemeanours. Abusing his authority I call it, but they could do that then and it was considered fine. Isn't it hard to believe that assaulting your class like that on one man's whim in the moment was tolerated as recently as the mid seventies.

Ross - we looked at the photo a while back.

If you look at the gates, they're opening inwards and there's a street & houses in the background so the chances are that they're running from a run around the local streets. I think someone checked on Google Earth (or something) - It is an urban area

I'd rather think these lads are possibly leaving the grounds on a cross country run than returning from one. Simply because I know from my own experience when I always finished a run I'd be caked in mud! My ankles would be coated in wet mud and I'd have mud that I'd kicked up all up my legs and shorts... ahh good times! I didn't mind the run sometimes a bit cold to start but we soon warmed up.

Declan on 22nd April 2022 at 09:30

The caning was for arguing with my mother. It was just how things were when I was a boy and bad behaviour was just not tolerated. Mostly I bit my tongue but at sixteen I really wanted longs and was pretty forceful in making my case. My father was a headmaster though fortunately not of the school I went to and he had a fierce reputation among the lads of the secondary modern school where he was head.

When I misbehaved he put his caning skills to good use at home! I think I got six for that on my bare bottom and it was sore for quite a few days but I did get my longs!

Paul.
A caning just for having an opinion about not wearing shorts seems a bit severe.

In the 1960s when I was growing up, clothes had to 'last'. My parents were frugal and of course both had been used to rationing of just about everything including clothing. There was never any question of clothes being bought for any other reasons than necessity and requirement.

As such, school uniforms were bought to last, usually things were bought a bit on the large size and worn until they were too short, too tight or just worn out. That there was plenty of 'wear' left in something usually overrode any other reason for replacement. In seven years at school, I had three blazers which was one more than my mother thought I should have needed but she finally had to agree as I moved into the sixth form that my current one would not last two years and was already too small.

So to come to shorts. I wore them until I was sixteen unlike most lads in my year. Shorts were compulsory until thirteen but then 'optional' for the rest of time at school. I suppose I was lucky because one lad wore them right up to leaving at eighteen. I needed new trousers at sixteen because my school shorts were worn out and had been too small for most of the previous year.

My mother was intent on buying new ones, I had argued that I needed longs now and the argument led to a discussion with my father, my mother's solution to most things. In reality, in these circumstances, a 'discussion with my father' was a discussion between his cane and my bottom and of course as I'm sure more than I remember, the cane always won.

My father must have thought about it though, the caning was for arguing, not for wanting longs and a couple of days later, he took me, bottom still pretty sore, shopping for school trousers. I guess that was one caning that was worth it.

Did you feel comfortable wearing shorts 13 and did you wear them just to please your parents.
I too wore them at that age!

There was no choice in the shorts . The school uniform was either long dark grey trousers or dark grey shorts. Black was also permitted, and my family stuck to shorts. As I have said by the time I was getting to 13 they were quite tight.

What sort of shorts did you wear?
Wear you allowed to chose the shorts?

No point. Parents minds were made up. Shorts it was until they decided otherwise.