DeMarathon

When he started to go to school at Madisonville, Ohio, Clarence DeMar found it more pleasant to dogtrot than to walk. He has been dogtrotting ever since. In 1911, when he was 23, he entered the 26-mi. Boston Marathon in which he had finished second the year before. A doctor listened to his heart, told him to drop out if he got tired, advised him to give up running afterward. Clarence DeMar won the race in record time. No one else has ever won the Boston Marathon more than twice. DeMar won it seven times, most recently in 1930. In 66 marathons, including three at the Olympic Games in 1912, 1924 and 1928, DeMar's record is 20 firsts, 12 seconds, nine thirds. Last year Clarence DeMar took time out from his marathon of marathons to write a short book about it which appeared last fortnight.*

In a style as simple, unspectacular and effective as his way of going up a hill, he tells how he decided it was more comfortable to run on his heels than on his toes; why he came in 12th in his first Olympic race, third in his second, 27th in his third; why he found Olympic competition the least enjoyable of his career; how he trained by running nine miles to work and back in Medford, Mass; how before the Brockton Marathon in 1911 he breakfasted on 12 oranges, a bag of pine nuts and a pound of caramels; how to dodge traffic in a marathon; and how he kept going between marathons as printer, scoutmaster, schoolteacher, soldier.

Most famed marathoner in the U. S., Clarence DeMar has not yet shown himself the most enduring. That distinction belongs to Peter Foley, 83, who was so much pleased by finishing 12th in the Boston Marathon of 1906 that he has run in it almost annually ever since, finished 48th four years ago. Though marathoners can continue running as long as they can breathe, the ablest marathoners are usually young men. At the finish line on Exeter Street last week, DeMar was 14th. Peter Foley was nowhere to be seen. He had started an hour ahead of the rest of the field, stopped after the first ten miles. Winner, when the favorite, John Kelley, weakened two miles from the finish, was a 24-year-old Quebec snowshoe champion named Walter Young, whose prizes were a laurel wreath, a silver cup, a medal.

*Marathon--Stephen Daye Press--($1.50).

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