Marathon

A crowd of 75,000 persons, ranked along Philadelphia streets, stood on tiptoes and strained eyes to catch a glimpse of a 38-year-old typesetter running along the pavement. He had run 26 miles and more that day, and had beaten by long margin a field of 62 other road-pounders. He was winning the cruelest of all races, wherein strong heart and mickle courage are the fundamental prerequisites --the Marathon. And trailing behind the winner Clarence De Mar jogged blister-footed Olympic champion Albin Stenroos, Finn, who led De Mar by two places in the 1924 competitions-- on that terrifically hot day the racers wilted like flies along the roadside. And behind him thumped other runners who thought De Mar was a has-been. The typesetter from Melrose, Mass., began his marathonic career at Boston in 1911; won two years in succession.

When, in 1922, he announced his entry in the Marathon* of that year, wiseacres ridiculed: "Out of competition nearly eleven years . . . This race is too hot for antiques!" But veteran Clarence De Mar won, has been winning with ironic consistency ever since. It is a strange anomaly that several aged Marathoners are still in competition; a 58-year-old finished the Philadelphia grind.

*A Greek athlete, Pheildippides, ran from the field of Marathon to Athens, to gasp, before falling dead, that the Greeks had been victorious over the Persians. Distance: 26 mi., 385 yd.