The Fallowmere running meeting used a straight course beside the recreation ground. Its distance was marked each year with a surveyor's chain borrowed from a builder. Two posts, a length of tape and a carefully mown strip transformed an ordinary field edge into a place where a few seconds could be treated seriously.
Preparations were already well advanced when Iris Pell noticed that the chain did not lie evenly. One link near the middle had been replaced with wire, and a second joint had twisted around itself. Neither defect looked large. Across repeated lengths, however, a small difference could put the finishing post in a different patch of grass.
The organisers had a second possible measure: the course laid out the previous summer. Its post holes could still be found, but their survival did not establish that last year's distance had been right. Using them would preserve continuity at the price of carrying forward an uncertainty nobody had previously needed to discuss.
The start was delayed while a sound chain was brought from another village. Spectators ate early, runners kept their coats on and the youngest competitors were allowed an informal race that promised no official time. The replacement measure shifted the finish by less than many onlookers expected, but farther than the organisers wished to ignore.
The meeting's results were eventually written on the usual sheet, accompanied by a separate note about the course. That note explains the afternoon better than the times alone. The contest depended on an agreement made before anyone ran: that a fast performance deserved a distance whose length was more than a familiar guess.