Gallows Hill

Text 1: The Loose End, by Felix Arkwright

An original novel extract.

By the third lap of Gallows Hill, the field had stretched out into a long, ragged thread of coloured vests, and Toby was the loose end of it. The mud had swallowed one of his trainers on the first lap. He had gone back for it. That had been a mistake. He knew that now.

His lungs were two paper bags someone was crumpling. Every breath tore. His legs, plastered brown to the knee, seemed to belong to an old man, and the hill rose ahead of him, and rose, and kept on rising, a great grey shoulder of grass that shrugged off every step he took. Rain came sideways across it in stinging handfuls. At the top, Mr Pell stood under a golf umbrella with a clipboard, looking at his watch.

Toby could have stopped. Nobody would have cared. Most of the others had finished and were in the changing rooms by now, steaming, laughing, eating crisps. But he did not stop. He put his head down and climbed, one squelching step, then another, then another, until the ground flattened under his feet. He did not sprint the last straight. He could not. But he ran it. And when he crossed the line, Mr Pell looked up from his clipboard, and after a moment he nodded.

How does Felix Arkwright use language and structure to show Toby’s struggle and determination in the race?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.