Marathon

For a long time Joie Ray was the best miler in the U. S. But he was more than that--he had what journalists call color. He would boast about what he was going to do and then he would do it. People called him "Chesty Joe" but they admired him and Ray kept on running and boasting and driving a taxicab in Chicago. Over a year ago he quit competition. Everyone said he was through. And then Ray announced that he was going to enter the 26-mile Boston Marathon on Patriots Day.

It was a crazy thing to do. Ray had never run a long race. No middle distance runner has ever been a great marathon runner; it is easier for a man who has never done any running at all to learn long distance pacing than for a sprinter to change his style to the loping, shuffling steps, between a run and a walk, used by marathon racers. Ray didn't try to change his style. He stepped out on his toes, pulling up his knees, as if the finish line were a mile away, and it was clear that he meant to hold his pace to the end.

A lot of runners always enter a big marathon who have no intention of finishing. They start because they can run a little and feel that they might surprise themselves this time; anyway, they can say they started and if they feel tired they can drop out. Before the pack had gone far over the smooth hard road winding toward Boston several had sat down to feel their feet and before the race was half over the pack was cut in half. And still Ray stepped out on his toes, grinning.

Now that the field was narrowing down the good runners had moved into settled positions. Near the front was Clarence H. De Mar, who had won the race five times. Clarence H. De Mar is 40, and emaciated, but he is the most efficient long distance runner in the U. S. Far behind De Mar plodded Jimmy Henigan who had been running in marathons for eight years but had never finished among the leaders. Before the race he had told a friend that he was going to win or break a blood vessel.

They moved into the last two miles. Something had certainly happened to Henigan. He was running the best race of his life.

Clarence H. De Mar won the race. After him tottered Henigan, up among the winners at last. And after Henigan came Joie Ray, running on his toes. He didn't recognize his own coach, Johnny Behr, who caught him in a blanket. When his shoes were cut away from his swollen and blistered feet it was found that the nails of his big toes had been torn loose from the cuticle. The soles of his feet were bleeding horribly. On the rubbing table his thigh and calf muscles contracted and knotted like wires that have been sustaining a tension and suddenly cut. It seemed as if he would never get back his breath. When he did he said, "What I want to do is get to Amsterdam and win the Olympic Marathon. . . ."