The most plausible explanation of the average superiority of Englishmen at the long distances is the big fact that outdoor sport has been for generations, and to a considerable body of the people, a real and vital thing in a sense that we do not as yet understand it here. Sport has long been a habit there; with us it has not yet quite ceased to be a fad. Distance running requires endurance rather than speed, and endurance is not acquired in a month or in a year. If it makes a difference in the way a race-horse answers the question which the jockey puts to him in the stretch, whether or not his grandsire won the Suburban, so should it make a difference in the last fifty yards of a mile run whether or not a man's father rowed in his college eight and a man's grandfather followed the hounds at three-score-and-ten. And if the battles of the Iron Duke were won on the football fields of the English schools, so, one fancies, is the mile or two-mile run of to-day's international meet won in the paper-chases of Rugby and Eton. The English climate, as well as the English habit of exercise, has also had its effect in cultivating endurance. The very thing which takes the life and snap out of an American sprinter who spends more than a week on English soil, seems to act as a sort of stay and seasoner to the more leisurely English athlete. There is, undoubtedly, something almost magnetic in our American air, at least in the sort of atmosphere that is found in the northeastern Atlantic states where the international meets have been held. It acts as a nervous stimulant, and it has been observed on several occasions that English athletes who had apparently been knocked out by the change of climate, and who went into a contest feeling anything but fit, yet managed to run quite as fast as they had ever run at home. What the English climate lacks in this stimulating effect it seems to make up in its general soothing and nourishing influence, and if the athlete who has been bred in it is deficient in snap and nervous spring he is strong in endurance and vitality.
The fastest authentic time yet recorded for the mile run was the record of 4 minutes 12-3/4 seconds made by the Englishman, W. G. George, in 1886. George had been running for several years as an amateur before becoming a professional in a match with another English distance runner, Cummings, and he had an amateur record of 4 minutes 18-2/5 seconds, made at the English championships, in 1884, which was at that time a new record for the world. The fastest amateur mile that has yet been run was that done in 4 minutes 15-3/5 seconds, by T. P. Conneff, at the New York Athletic Club track at Traver's Island, on August 28, 1895. So far as the record books go, therefore, America can claim the fastest amateur mile; and yet Conneff was born in Ireland, and he had run on the other side before coming here. Our next fastest mile, 4 minutes 21-4/5 seconds, was made by George Orton, and he came from Canada. In England, on the other hand, a number of men have done 4 minutes 20 seconds in the mile, and at the English championships in 1902, for instance, J. Binks won in 4 minutes 16-4/5 seconds, the second man was only one yard behind him, and the third and fourth men both finished within 4 minutes 20 seconds.
Of the American runners who have attained distinction in the long or middle distances, and proved an exception to our ruling mediocrity, Lawrence E. Meyers was first, both in point of time and in merit. Meyers was essentially a runner of the middle distances, and certainly one of the fastest all-round runners that the world has ever seen. He was an athlete of indomitable gameness, and there was none of the shorter distances at which he was not always willing and ready to compete. He made records in the short "trick" distances, and he several times won amateur championships in the hundred and two-twenty; but it was at the longer distances up to one thousand yards that he was most extraordinary, and it was in these that, starting from scratch, he ran through fields of the best men that could be put up against him on dozens of tracks here and abroad. In personal appearance Meyers was thin almost to emaciation; indeed, when he joined the Manhattan Athletic Club, under whose colors he did the greater part of his running, he was supposed to be an invalid. When in running condition he weighed only one hundred twelve pounds. He was all legs, slender as these underpinnings were, and had practically no body at all above the waist. When he was on the track, however, this lack of roundness and symmetry was forgotten in the startling ease and smoothness of his long, light greyhound stride. When he ran in England in 1885 the Earl of Crawford is said to have exclaimed, at the Wigan Cricket Club games, "There is the only real runner I have ever seen!"
Meyers first appeared in 1878 at the games of the New York Athletic Club on election day. He received eighteen yards' handicap in the quarter mile and won in 55 seconds. The next spring at the games of the Staten Island Athletic Club he won the same distance from scratch in 54 seconds. By the year 1880 Meyers had rounded into something like what was to be his real form, and he won four American and four Canadian championships. The events in which the American championships were won were the one-hundred and two-hundred-twenty yard dashes, the quarter and the half mile runs. The times for these four events were respectively: 10-2/5 seconds, 23-3/5 seconds, 52 seconds, and 2 minutes 4-3/5 seconds—none remarkable in itself, but all respectable—and when it is considered that these times were made in open competition in one afternoon, the magnitude of the feat is apparent. During the early eighties Meyers met and vanquished almost every middle-distance runner of his day. In addition to his championship winnings in the sprints, which we have touched upon already, Meyers won the American amateur championship in the quarter-mile run in 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, and 1884; the half-mile championship he won in 1879, 1880, and 1884. His quarter mile in 49-2/5 seconds, in 1881, was the best of these performances, but he made records of 35 flat for three hundred thirty yards; 1 minute 31 seconds for seven hundred yards; 1 minute 44-2/5 seconds for eight hundred yards; and 2 minutes 13 seconds for one thousand yards. After beating everything in sight in this country, Meyers, went to England in 1885 and duplicated there his suecesses here. The story of his races during that tour is merely a description of the various ways in which an invincible scratch man mows down the fields that are strung out against him. Here we find him giving the English champion, Cowie, eight yards' start in the quarter and beating him in 48-4/5 seconds; there he runs a half-mile and a quarter-mile race over a grass course in the same afternoon, capturing the latter in 49-2/5 seconds. Local stars wager that the stranger cannot give them such-and-such a handicap, as for example, this Widner runner who brags that Meyers can't beat him with thirty-five yards' start in the half mile. Meyers shrugs his shoulders, first ploughs through two rugged fields from scratch, and wins a half and a quarter, then tells the Widner challenger to take his distance. There are twenty other entries. Meyers passes them all, one by one, including the thirty-five-yard man, has a clear field at the seven-hundred-forty-yard mark, and wins in a romp, eight yards to the good, in 1 minute 57-3/5 seconds, over a rough grass course. At Smithport we find the Mayor presenting him the prize with a congratulatory speech; at Manchester he wins a quarter in 49-1/5 seconds with a broken shoe; at the Blackley Cricket Club's games, in the same city, he wins a half, on a grass track, in 1 minute 56-1/4 seconds, jumps into a cab, and is driven six miles to another track, where he runs a quarter in 49-3/5 seconds. This quarter was one of the races in which Meyers was beaten, third being the best he could get, and it illustrates the gaminess of the man that he would never refuse a challenge so long as he could stand up and have at least a chance of winning. He was not one of those athletes who treat their legs and lungs as grand-opera singers do their voices. Meyers's last appearance in England was on August 19, 1885, at Rockdale. Here he won the half mile in 1 minute 57 seconds, and ran a dead heat of 46-2/5 seconds in the quarter. Mason, the runner with whom the dead heat was run, started from the twenty-four-yard mark. He was too much fatigued to run another heat, although Meyers was ready to accommodate him, and the race went to the American by default. Meyers's English tour marks the top and the practical finish of his running career. On his return to this country a delegation went down the harbor to meet and greet him, and a lavish collation was served at the Astor House in his honor. He presently announced his retirement from athletics, and on the evening of October 17, 1885, a big testimonial benefit and athletic meet was given for him at the Madison Square Garden. Meyers was heaped with glory and flowers, and some $4000 was presented to him as the profits of the entertainment. The famous runner then gradually dropped out of athletics, finally became a race-track bookmaker, was as reckless of even his mere health as, in his running days, he had been of his own comfort and prestige, and it was not long before he went completely to pieces.
This was the heyday time of our club athletics. With a man like Meyers running it was no wonder that the interest in the new sport grew amazingly and that English and Irish and Canadian athletes were attracted to try their fortunes here. Among these transplanted runners was the Englishman, E. C. Carter, picturesquely known during the later eighties to the club athletic public as "Eddie" Carter, the "Little Boy in Pink." This sobriquet was tacked upon him in England because of the somewhat flowery costume in which it pleased him to appear on the track. He had acquired a great reputation over there and had finished second to W. G. George, when he sailed for America in 1885. It was the psychological moment for a first-class distance runner to appear in this country, and Carter was taken up by the club athletes and made much of. He joined the New York Athletic Club, became captain of the Suburban Harriers, and interested himself much in cross-country running; and at the amateur championships he soon showed what he was made of. In 1886 and 1887 he won the championships in both the mile and the five-mile runs, smashing conclusively the record in the longer event; he won the senior individual cross-country championship in 1892, and the ten-mile championship in 1891, 1893, and 1894. It was at these long events that the "Little Boy in Pink" was best. Many of the records which he made during the latter eighties still hold for various distances, from five miles, which he did in 25 minutes 23-3/5 seconds, to nine and one-half miles, which he ran in 50 minutes 25-2/5 seconds. In speaking of cross-country running we shall have more to say of Carter.
"Tommy" Conneff, the greatest of our adopted runners, came from Ireland soon after Carter. He already had a reputation as a fast man at the long distances in his native land, and he soon established his position as the fastest man at all but the longest distances on this side of the water. Conneff was an excellent example of the stocky, solidly built long-distance runner. Men of his type rarely seem to excel at the middle distances, where a certain amount of speed and great length of stride are necessary; but in the longer distances, where endurance is the most potent factor, they often perform better than tall, slender men of great length of limb. Thus, while slender, long-legged Meyers might run at one hundred twelve pounds, Conneff was a short, chunky chap, scarcely more than five feet in height, and built like a gymnasium man. Conneff won the national championship in the five-mile run in 1888, 1889, 1890, and 1891, and in 1890 he won also the championship in the mile and ten-mile runs.
After nearly ten years of track racing, Conneff still remained, in 1895, the best miler on this side of the water, and it was in the trial race to choose the men who were to compete against the Oxford-Cambridge team in the autumn of that year that Conneff made his record. George Orton, who was also in this trial race, finished about one hundred yards behind the champion, and "Eddie" Carter joined Conneff in the last lap and set the pace in the final three hundred yards. The half was run in 2 minutes 6-3/5 seconds, the three-quarters in 3 minutes 10-4/5 seconds, and the mile in 4 minutes 15-3/5 seconds. This supplanted the previous world's record of F. S. Bacon of the Reading and Ashton Harriers, made at the Stamford Bridge Grounds, in England, in July of the same year. Conneff had never been in as good form as he was that autumn, and it was the opinion of "Father Bill" Curtis, and other capable judges, that he could at any time have beaten his own record. The chance of a lifetime came at the international games, but Conneff contented himself with running the mile in slightly over 4 minutes 18 seconds, saving himself for the three-mile run which was to come later on. It was anything but good judgment, his friends thought, for the winning of the three-mile race could add practically nothing at all to his fame and he was fit at the time, in the opinion of such experts as Mr. Curtis, certainly to lower his own amateur record, and possibly to break George's world's record. The chance was lost, and Conneff never again attained such record-breaking form.
Although our best long-distance running has been done by adopted athletes, and under club colors, the best men at the middle distances have been college bred. Thus it was Maxwell W. Long of Columbia who made the world's record of 47 seconds flat for the quarter mile, and only three-fourths of a second less fast was the record of Wendell Baker of Harvard. It was C. N. Kilpatrick of Union who made the world's record of 1 minute 53-2/5 seconds for the half mile, and close to Kilpatrick was the 1 minute 54-3/5 seconds of Evan Hollister of Harvard. And beside and behind such records as these is a solid background of first-class running—the running of those who were essentially sportsmen before they were athletes, and who went into the game because they thought it was fun.
The quarter mile, although generally spoken of as a "run," is really more properly a sprint. It is run at almost top speed until the last fifty yards, when the runner squeezes his corks and "finishes on what he's got left." Of the quarter-milers who followed Meyers and who were anywhere near to his class, Wendell Baker was the first, and, for many years, the most notable. At the intercollegiates Baker won the quarter only once, in 1885, and then in the slow time of 54-2/5 seconds—a commonplace enough record on paper compared with three consecutive victories of his college mate, W. H. Goodwin, who immediately preceded him, and the three straight firsts of that other Harvard quarter-miler, S. T. Wells, who immediately followed him. But Baker's speed had been convincingly proved on other tracks and in the shorter distances at Mott Haven, and he decided to try, on July 1, 1886, at the Beacon Park track in Boston, to break the world's amateur record. Meyers held it at that time with his quarter in 48-3/5 seconds. The course at Beacon Park was nearly straight-away and of dirt, which, when in perfect condition, many runners have preferred to cinders. The upper layer was scraped away and the surface made smooth and hard. Baker sprinted the first two hundred twenty yards alone, and then a pace-maker lifted him over the rest of the distance. At three hundred fifty yards the time was 37 seconds, at four hundred yards 43 seconds, and at the finish 47-3/4 seconds. While warming up for the trial Baker split his running shoe slightly, and in the middle of the quarter the split spread so that he had to kick the shoe off and run the last one hundred yards with one shoe off and one shoe on. Of the three watches at the finish one showed 47-1/5 seconds, one 47-2/5 seconds, and one 47-3/5 seconds, so that the authenticity of the record of 47-3/4 seconds is more than established. Wendell Baker's record held for over ten years, until broken by Maxwell Long of Columbia, but between the two there were many good quarter-milers. Dohm of Princeton, Shattuck of Amherst, who won the intercollegiate quarter in 1891 in 49-1/2 seconds, Downs, Wright, Sayer, Merrill, Vincent of Harvard, and Jarvis of Princeton, were all first-class men. Burke of Boston University, and later of Harvard, immediately preceded Long as national champion in the quarter mile, and in 1897, indeed, before Long attained his best form, Burke had the pleasure of beating him. Burke won the quarter at the national championships in that year in 49 flat, the year before he had won it in 48-4/5 seconds, and the year before that in 49-3/5 seconds, a record quite enough in itself to establish his reputation as one of our best and most consistent quarter-milers. In addition to his quarter-mile running he won the half mile once at both Mott Haven and the national championships, and he added to his list of victories at the Olympic games in Athens, and at all sorts of athletic meets throughout the East, and particularly in and about Boston. As far as form went Burke was one of the prettiest runners of his day. He was tall, slender, and lithely put together, and in action he "got his back into it" with that steel-spring rhythm which adds so much to the music of a runner's stride.
Long did not try for the world's record in the quarter until after he had won at Mott Haven and at the national championships, in both this country and England, and proved by the stern logic of competition that he could beat all comers. The trial was run at the Guttenberg race track, in New Jersey, under the most favorable circumstances. The weather conditions were all that could be desired. The four hundred forty yards were measured straight-away, several sprinters jumped into the running and set the pace at graduated distances along the course, and the previous times were smashed all the way from the three-hundred-fifty-yard mark to the tape. Long's quarter in 47 seconds beat all previous records, amateur and professional, in this country and in England. Boardman of Yale, Holland of Georgetown, and Haigh of Harvard has each won at Mott Haven since Long's day, and in excellent time; but no one has done anywhere near his record, and it is one, indeed, that is not likely soon to be disturbed.
Kilpatrick, the world's fastest half-miler, entered the championship class in the summer of 1894, when he won both the intercollegiate and the national amateur half mile. Kilpatrick was then a student of Union. The half at Mott Haven was run in 1 minute 59-4/5 seconds, and that at the national championship in 1 minute 55-4/5 seconds. Kilpatrick, also, won the national amateur championship half mile in the two following years, 1895 and 1896, in the respective times of 1 minute 56-2/5 seconds and 1 minute 57-3/5 seconds. His supreme performance, and that on which his world's record stands, was made at the games between the New York Athletic Club team and the Oxford-Cambridge team on September 21, 1895. There were four men in the race, F. S. Horan and C. H. Lewin of Cambridge University and the London Athletic Club, H. S. Lyons of the New York Athletic Club, and Kilpatrick, who ran both as a member of the latter club and as a student of Union. At the start Lyons and Lewin took the lead, and the former, who was an exquisite judge of pace, ran the first quarter in 54-1/2 seconds, as he had been directed to do. Kilpatrick, who judged pace poorly, trailed Lyons, as he had been instructed, and thus finished the first quarter in very fast time—much faster than he would have run it if left to his own devices. Shortly beyond the quarter-mile mark the champion to-be swung 'ahead into the lead. For the next two hundred yards he continued to draw farther and farther away, and although Horan of Cambridge made a game rally and shortened the gap a bit in the last one hundred yards, Kilpatrick won decisively, sixteen yards to the good. His time was 1 minute 53-2/5 seconds, which broke all previous records for the half mile, amateur and professional. Horan, himself a runner of the very first class, finished in 1 minute 55-2/5 seconds. As far as weather and track went the conditions under which Kilpatrick's record was made were perfect. The inevitable "if," which almost invariably tantalizes the spectators of a record-breaking performance, was present here in the shape of the embarrassing circumstances in which Kilpatrick was placed during the race. His running clothes became deranged early in the race, and he ran the last quarter under such vexation as was enough, in the opinion of "Father Bill" Curtis and other spectators of similar discernment and experience, to have slowed his time a considerable fraction of a second.The college runner who has come nearest to Kilpatrick's form was Evan Hollister of Harvard '97. Hollister won the intercollegiate half mile three years in succession, in 1895, 1896, and 1897. He was relied upon for consistent firsts in the half and quarter at dual games, and in team races at the winter meets he was an equally reliable performer. His record—the Harvard College record, and the fastest college half mile next to Kilpatrick's—was made at the Harvard varsity games in the spring of 1897. It was the writer's pleasure to run—at a discreet distance—in the race in which Mr. Hollister made this record, and I remember that everybody wished there had been some one to push him and make him do better. As it was, starting from the pole he strode out ahead and ran what was practically an unpaced trial from start to finish. It was a fine day for running and the track was perfect. Hollister broke the tape in 1 minute 54-2/5 seconds, and he was quite able to take care of himself at the finish. If Mr. Kilpatrick could have been there that day and in his 1895 form, there would have been a half-mile race worth seeing. Hollister was a tall and well-built man, with more body to him than most half-milers have. When running, his back was held almost perfectly straight, a bit too straight perhaps, and the spring seemed to come almost altogether from his legs, without much aid from up above. But whatever the resulting picture lost in flexibility and easy litheness, it made up in its impression of straight speed and power. As one used to see him coming down the cinder path, with his back firm, arms down, and chin well in, he reminded one of an express train on a good stretch of level track. Kilpatrick raced and won only once at Mott Haven, and then, probably because of his inability properly to judge pace and his habit of loafing in the first quarter, he won only in 1 minute 59-1/5 seconds. Hollister's 1 minute 56-4/5 seconds made at Mott Haven in 1896, therefore, stood as the intercollegiate record until equalled in 1904 by E. B. Parsons of Yale.
No half-milers have since come up to step into the seven-leagued shoes that Kilpatrick and Hollister wore. Burke, who was one of Kilpatrick's contemporaries, lasted long enough to win the half in 1898 at the national championships, and at Mott Haven in 1899. The latter race was won in 1.58-4/5, but Burke was more particularly a quarter-miler and his best work was done at the shorter distance. J. F. Cregan of Princeton, who won the half in 1.58-2/5 at Mott Haven, in 1898, on the same day that he won the mile in 4.23-3/5, was one of the best middle-distance men who have come up since the record was made. Cregan had the build and the look of the typical half-miler, but he went in most seriously for the longer distance and he repeated his Mott Haven victory of 1898 in the mile in 1899 and 1900. These three consecutive victories, in the times of 4.23-3/5, 4.25-1/5, and 4.24-2/5, are the most consistent record for high-class mile running ever made at Mott Haven. George Orton of Pennsylvania, and of various athletic clubs, holds the intercollegiate mile record of 4.23-2/5, one-fifth of a second better than Cregan's record which he made in 1895. Orton won the mile again at Mott Haven in 1897, in 4.25. He was an indefatigable racer and a successful campaigner on all sorts of tracks. He won the amateur championship miles in 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1900. His best time for these races was 4.24-2/5, which he made in 1894, the year before he broke the intercollegiate record, and the rest of the times were all respectable. Orton was a typical mile runner, short, compact, hard as nails, and he ran low, easily, and always craftily. This running with one's head, necessary as it is in all the distances longer than the dashes, is indispensable in such long-drawn-out contests as the mile. In the quarter the runner practically sprints down to the last fifty yards, when the inevitable fatigue overcomes him and he finishes "on what he has left"; in the half the first-class racer tries, generally, to do the first quarter in from 57 to 59 seconds. He has the sensation of "moving up" in the last half, but this is caused rather more by the added effort necessary to maintain the pace after fatigue has set in than by any actual increase in speed. It might almost be said, speaking in generalities, that it is the runner's aim in the half to start out at a pace which can consistently be maintained from start to finish. There are different methods of planning out the pace in the mile, but the intelligent runner is likely to run his first quarter in the neighborhood of 65 seconds, the second quarter at about the same pace, the third quarter a bit slower, and the last as fast as he safely can. To be lured into a rash sprinting match in the first part of so long a distance as the mile is obviously fatal, and yet it is a striking fact that time and again men who have all the physical qualifications of first-class milers fail merely because they lack the self-control and the headwork properly to run this race. Certainly, in a large field, where there are two first-class runners of practically equal ability, one of whom runs blindly and by impulse and the other of whom races with judgment, the chances of victory are decidedly with the man who runs with his "head." To be able to "feel" the pace which one can consistently maintain throughout a mile race, to settle into it after the spring away from the mark, not to be held back by crafty campaigners who happen to be especially good at the sprint-in to the tape nor to be hurried by decoy pace-makers—all this requires endless trials of running under the watch, and, when the race actually comes, all that the contestant has of judgment, self-control, and patience. There are times when a scratch man may want to sprint away at the start for the express purpose of taking the heart out of his less experienced and less confident opponents, or purposely hold back because he knows that he can beat them when it comes to the sprint home, or when the best way to wear out a rival may seem to be to hook one's self into his stride, force him to set the pace, and trust to taking the fight out of him by a sudden show of strength at the finish. All such things depend on the runner's temperament and physical condition, the fields that he is up against, and the special accidents of the race. Whatever is done must be done quickly, and any one who has ever run a mile or a half mile knows that it is very much easier, after the race is over, to tell what ought to have been done at any given moment than it was to decide during the running, when things were moving like the pictures in a biograph machine, legs were leaden, and lungs were stone, and some rank outsider was showing his heels ten or fifteen yards ahead. And it is this strategic ability, this trick of thinking in action, that makes the difference between the runners who merely run pluckily, and those who run and win.The two Grant brothers illustrate vividly the consequences of running by impulse and running with self-control and judgment. The younger of these Canadians, representing Pennsylvania, won the two-mile race at Mott Haven in 1899 and 1900, and in 1903 at the Traver's Island track he set the American amateur record for this event at 9 minutes 27-4/5 seconds. He won the amateur championships in the five-mile run in 1902, in the two-mile run in 1903, in the mile in 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903, and in the half mile in 1900. None of these races was won in phenomenal time, although the performances were all respectable enough; and by them and by excellent indoor work the younger Grant is down on the books for all time as a successful and consistent long-distance runner. His older brother, on the contrary, never won at the intercollegiates, although he carried the Harvard colors for several years, and except for a five-mile dead heat, which he ran with his brother for the amateur championship in 1899, at Concord Junction, Massachusetts, and some minor successes in cross-country runs, his name scarcely appears on the record books. Yet, when he first appeared on Holmes Field, at Cambridge, he was looked upon by the undergraduates as a sort of prodigy from another world, not governed by the ordinary laws of fatigue and speed, tireless and invincible. The first morning he came out on the track, if we remember correctly, and was told to jog an easy quarter or three-eighths, or something like that, he clipped out a half mile in 2 minutes 3 seconds, pounded on with unabated enthusiasm into the third quarter, and if the trainer hadn't stopped him he would probably be running yet. He had been bred in Canada, where, so the undergraduates of his day believed, almost anything might happen, and stories were told of his running fifty and sixty miles as a constitutional, of his deserting the railroad train and striking off cross country whenever he got within a hundred miles or so of home. The writer will never forget a hare-and-hound run in which Mr. Grant and he happened to be the hares. We had scarcely left the backyards and chicken coops of wildest Cambridge and struck out into open and uphill country before the pace began to become embarrassing, but when seven or eight miles had been covered and the straight, hard length of Commonwealth Avenue stretched on endlessly toward town, offering not the slightest excuse for loafing—it was when we reached this point and Grant, disdaining longer to conceal his impatience, whirled round and, easily keeping up by running backward, began an animated discourse on the evils of intemperance, that we began to suspect that we were rather out of his class. The man did seem practically tireless. He was hard as nails, and his rather heavily built legs with their bulging calves—like those of a professional baseball player—were perfect dynamos of spring and muscle. He was sincere in his training and he had plenty of sand. In short, on paper he had all the makings of a phenomenal runner, and yet the first time he went down to New Haven to run in the dual games he was fooled by one of the simplest of devices—the sending out of a decoy pace-maker to set a quite impossible pace for the first quarter—ran himself almost out before the race was half through, and was beaten by men who should really have not been in his class.
It is far from our purpose so to accent this matter of "headiness" as to make the mere winning of a race overbalance in importance the sport itself and the general fun of running. At the same time, if racing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, and there is no reason why it should lose its zest in any way because intelligence is used in directing and restraining the merely physical impulse to "let loose" and win. There are other times in which the straight pleasures of running, unadulterated with calculation or device, may be indulged in besides those trying moments on the cinder path between the pistol shot and the breaking of the tape. Compared with track racing, even such arduous sports as steeplechasing and cross-country racing are, in a way, leisurely, and their competition takes on more of the pleasures of the chase. In the next chapter we shall leave the cinder path for the turf and follow the distance runners into the open country.
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