'You'll never believe it,' she said as she attacked a mountain of ham salad, 'but I did my personal best time in the half-mile straight after a plate full of chicken and chips.'
Barbara Banks, 23, of Spring Vale, Wallasey, is one of Britain's athletic hopefuls was recalling the evening last summer when she entered a Liverpool Parks and Gardens' meeting at Wavertree.
'I went straight from work,' she said, 'and my aunt went out and got a big pile of chicken and chips. I didn't want to offend her, so I ate it anyway, I was hungry.'
'Normally I don't eat a great deal before a race, but I went out and did 2 mins. 17.7 secs., my best ever time for that distance.'
In these days when even amateurs are becoming more and more professional in their approach to sport, Barbara doesn't conform to the dedicated watch-the-clock training, the early nights and strict diets.
She loves athletics but refuses to let them rule her life. 'I go out for a run every night, but I don't have set times and nor do I keep a record of how much training I do,' she said.
'I fit it in with the rest of things I want to do and that means some evenings I'm out training early and others I go for a run late at night. It all depends on what other plans I've made.'
She talked as she was about to fly to Poland with a small England team for a match. It was only her second trip abroad with a representative team.
Barbara, a cross-country runner in the winter and a half-miler or 1,500 metres runner in the summer, is surprised by her success. As she talked about her rise from obscurity to international recognition in the last two years, she was shy, almost to the point of embarrassment, discussing it.
'I can't forget how bad I was,' she said. ''The other day a friend of mine sent me a five-years-old athletics magazine with a report of the Northern cross-country championships of 1965 in it.
'I was 25 out of about 30 and was almost five minutes behind the winner. The girl sent it to say 'Look now you have improved.'
I've always preferred cross-country and long distance running. I only dabble in 800 metres and never expect to do well.
She recalled a cross-country event she had won at Rochdale. 'I went over on the train on my own for the race in the Northern Cross-Country League. I ran and won it, and I just couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents about it. It was so nice.'
'After the race, in the dressing room, I heard other girls talking among themselves and asking: 'Who is she?'
'In another race, Jane Perry just beat me in the Cheshire cross-country. I was surprised I'd got so close to her, because she used to beat me by about five minutes. I thought to myself afterwards: 'Gosh, I must have improved.'
From just another keen athlete, Barbara has risen suddenly to the fringe of being among the country's best.
'The turning point seemed to come about three years ago when the doctor found I was a little anaemic and put me on a course of iron. Suddenly I found I'd knocked 10 seconds off my personal best for the half mile and was doing better in cross-country races.'
Most athletes are looking to the coming summer as a chance to break into the list of candidates for the next Olympic Games in Munich in 1972.
Does Barbara have ambitions in that direction? 'I haven't really got any ambitions. I find it difficult to think beyond next week,' said the girl for whom the biggest obstacle to a bright athletics career seems to be a lack of belief in her own ability.
Ends
Source - Liverpool Echo - Thursday, 14/05/1970
Ref 1539