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The Autobiography of Clarence DeMar: Part Il
The man who became a Boston Marathon legend takes us behind the scenes of his 1936 Boston Marathon race and then recounts his first Olympic experience in 1912.
by Clarence DeMar
CHAPTER FOUR: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO RUN A MARATHON?
“What does a fellow think about when he’s running one of those long grinds?” How many times have I been asked that! Whatever I may think myself may not apply to others, but some of the general things that go through a marathoner’s mind will be the same. [have asked several runners, including Jimmie Henigan, and while they differ on just what they think about, all agree to a tenseness and fear and uncertainty about something.
Jimmie, for instance, says he is always wondering whether he will finish or not. That particular fear has crossed my mind very few times, for I always feel sure that I can finish if I slow up. Another runner, not so experienced, always wondered whether he’d be running ina good position when he passed his native town less than half way through. Still another worries for fear he won’t get through in time for any refreshments at the finish unless he rides. Another has to go to work for the night and is uncertain about the exertion tiring him too much. All have their fears and worries exaggerated by the tenseness of the competition.
But let’s start at the beginning of a typical Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) Marathon and describe a few phases. This will be mostly the 1936 race. Here I am just reaching Framingham, via bus. As I stroll across the street someone says, “That’s him!” Another says, “Aw no, DeMar’s taller.” Then to settle it the first hollers, “Hi, Clarence.” My feelings were mixed. Should I ignore the salutation as I often did in such cases, or turn and speak? He probably did not want my autograph, and the people of Framingham have on the whole
been loyal athletic friends of mine, so I smiled and said, “Hey.” “Hope you win,” said one. “Good luck,” chimed in the other.
Reaching the dog-cart, I judged that there was no great turn-over of employees there for one recalled my having eaten with them off and on for a generation before the race, and the service they gave me was A-1. Dropping into a store I bought some oranges and prunes to chew on during the evening and the next morning. There was no escape from the people in Framingham. “How good is the Indian?” asked one clerk. “Great if he hasn’t too many handlers,” I answered. “You like it hot, don’t you?” asked another man. “Yes, the heat always kills off some of my rivals,” I agreed. “When is the next bus to Hopkinton?” I asked. “In twenty minutes, why don’t you run up,” one helped.
I walked about a quarter of a mile when someone opened the door of a car and said “Get in DeMar, I’m going right up to Hopkinton.” He proudly introduced me to the other man in the auto and then as he stopped for gas asked the man at the filling station if he knew who I was. “Oh yes, I’ve watched him run since I wore knee pants,” replied the man. In a few minutes we had covered the five miles to the Marathon Inn at the start. “Guess you will find a lot of them up there,” remarked the man who had given me the ride. “Oh, that’s too much of ahome-coming for any one who wants all his energy for the race,” I replied. “I stop across the road with the Halleys. Here’s the house, right here.”
Mr. and Mrs. Halley and her sons gave me the usual welcome and said that my room was ready. She asked when I wanted breakfast and promised me the usual protection from fans and autograph seekers the next morning. She even cautioned her sons that if they were out late to return quietly. Along night in bed with the cool Hopkinton air blowing in, and quite a bit of sleep, in spite of a certain tenseness that never fails in anticipation of the big contest, made me feel fresh and hopeful the next morning. Up by seven I arranged for my breakfast of cereal, toast, and eggs at nine, ate several oranges and went for a stroll.
Out a couple of hundred yards near the start I found one fourth-rate runner of the two hundred odd expected starters also looking things over. “Hello DeMar,” he greeted me, “Don’t you remember me? I lead the Bunker Hill race for three miles. I’m — – – from Framingham.” “You must be pretty good, then,” I replied, “Good luck to you.” “Say,” he whispered, “do you suppose they will let me run without the dollar entry fee?” “Sure,” I replied, “Of course, the B.A.A. is awful hard up, but since you are here, I’ bet it will be OK, and, oh yes, tell them you’ll pay them next year.” “No,” he answered, “I won’t make them wait that long, but will mail the buck soon as I get paid by the W.P.A.”
Ataboutten the buses arrived from Framingham with the rest of the runners, the officials and doctors. A lot of athletes and their friends had already come by private car so there were scores of those parked about. I thought I might as well get the physical exam over and also get my number so I walked towards the Inn.
But I couldn’t get near the house without signing autographs. And yes, there was Humbert Cirafice, as usual, with entry blanks for his twelve-mile race in Lynn next month. “We hope you can come down, Clarence,” he coaxed, “Can’t promise,” I laughed. “Might be in Boston that weekend and need the exercise, but probably not.”
Besides the “camp followers” there were others with more business, including reporters, officials, and runners. I overheard, “How do you figure this race?” “Oh, I like Pawson, but I’m always expecting old man DeMar to fool them again sometime.—Oh, there he is! How are you Clarence? Going to win today?” “Say you fellows give me a pain,” I replied, “always asking a decrepit old cuss nearly fifty to win.” “Yes,” agreed Bill Kennedy. “It’s that way with me, too. As I left home nearly a dozen hoped I’d win, and I told each of the darn fools that there were at least twenty in the race with a better chance than I.”
“We’d better not let him run,” joshed a doctor as he recognized me. But after a weighing in, apulse, heart, and blood pressure test, they said that I was as good as ever, so far as they were concerned. I wandered through the runners’ rooms of the Inn and saw about every runner of note that I could think of. But more noticeable than the runners was the stench of rub down, with a mixture of alcohol, witch hazel, wintergreen, and lesser-known substances. And what a mess for someone to clean up, with newspapers, bottles, and boxes scattered every where. The B.A.A. gets a bargain when it pays fifty dollars for the use of the Inn during the forenoon.
Few runners have gone to the slight extra expense to hire a separate dressing room in another house like myself. Even Johnny Kelly, the favorite to win, was cramped up in a corner, like a fourth-rater, looking thin and determined. My unexpressed comment was that it was funny his friends hadn’t thought of hiring a room in the neighborhood. Still, I observed the golden rule in this case and made no comment. What were the babel, bad smells, and lack of privacy in comparison to the distraction of a free piece of advice! And ina year or two he’d probably find out for himself!
On the way back to my private house I had to pose for several fans with cameras, but I finally escaped. Even here, a fellow from Pennsylvania who had stayed in the room next to mine with the Halleys a few marathons back came to call. In being courteous to this man I neglected to check in at the start fifteen minutes early. With ten minutes to wait J arrived at the bull pen to be officially recorded as on hand. George Brown was nerved up and displeased at my irregularity. However, I had a feeling that no one would accuse me of being down the road a few miles when the gun went off so I took my place with the mass of contestants without officially checking in.
With five minutes to wait the newspapers wanted a picture. “All the hams are up front, get a few good ones,” exclaimed one. So by request a few of us
former winners were privileged to lead before the race began, and incidentally the picture would prove that I was at the start.
At the crack of the gun on the stroke of twelve there was a scramble, but as usual by holding out my elbows, like a chicken about to fly, I protected myself. And, as always, I was fortunate enough not to have any one step on my heel and pull the shoe off.
In less than half a mile I began to feel very tense and somewhat like the foreman of a print shop with a lot of work piled up, or perhaps an editor with a scoop coming in ten minutes before the presses started. All my faculties were being concentrated on the race, and it was about as natural for me to do this as it would be for a dog to walk on his hind legs or a college student to do some thinking. My physical distress at having my heart, lungs, and legs work at abnormal speed and the mental difficulty of keeping my body at the task was such that the one thing I dreaded was interruption or distraction of any kind. Any word or deed aimed to get my attention would be like throwing a monkey wrench into a finely geared piece of machinery. Just a personal word like “Step on it there” or “Get going, Clarence” and I felt furious. But of course the impersonal yelling and cheering was a slight encouragement.
Any exhortations that annoyed me would be exaggerated many times if they came from an intimate friend. Sometimes with the wild imaginations of the contest I think anything but loving, friendly thoughts about my special friends, just imagining them making little trivial inconsequential suggestions that we might win. I much sympathize with the runner who told me he hated to have his wife go to races. But she insisted that she didn’t marry him to be put on a shelf, so he put up with her occasionally.
As I tore down on the right side of the road through Ashland how afraid I was that someone would bother me. Was the fear increased because I was running, or did I run better because I was afraid? Ask the psychologists, I don’t know. But here came a distraction from the rear. The official cars were coming from the start to join the leaders. As they came along, they kept making the runners move over to the left to let them get by easier. I was puzzled as to what I’d say when they told me to move over as I felt the race was for runners, not official cars, yet I’ve always had a feeling of gratitude to the B.A.A. for their excellent management of their marathon and hated to bawl them out even if I was tense and concentrated. My dilemma was solved by a runner just in back snapping, “Get on over there yourself.” “Oh,” said the official, “if that is the way you feel, okay.” “Nice running, Clarence,” they encouraged, as they passed on the left.
Approaching Framingham, while in a group of seven or eight, a contestant kept running in front of me and slowing up. This annoyed me a little, but nothing like the insane anger caused by meddlesome fans, as I’m always symee
pathetic with contestants, knowing they are working as hard as I. And I knew further it was natural to hustle while behind a man you wanted to beat and to slow up as soon as you were ahead. So three or four times I merely ran around the pest and said nothing. But pretty soon he was doing the same thing to Johnny Semple. The second or third time Johnny exploded in good Scotch brogue, “You blooming fool, what’s the idea?” No waste of energy or anything else for Scotch Johnny if he could help it!
Rounding acurve approaching Framingham a press car was in my way. “Let me have the inside, will you?” I shouted. Obligingly they stopped and opened the door of their sedan. “The inside of the curve, of course,” I yelled, and rushed on. Passing through Framingham close to the ropes a man reached out, slapped me on the chest and yelled, “Hi buddy, remember Saint Amand!” A marathon is no time to reminisce!
With periods of tenseness and fear of distraction alternating with periods of comparative calm I continued, the pendulum of distress and ease swinging back and forth about a dozen times during the race. From this I can truthfully say that I got not only my second wind but also tenth and twelfth wind in most marathons. But whether I’m tense or calm it is not a time for reasoning things like mathematics. Sometimes minor problems of addition, subtraction, or division present themselves in figuring how I should run some stretch in comparison to other years considering my present condition. Sometimes it takes several miles to get an answer I could get in a minute at my desk; but I can get it and know when it is right, too.
I find many, if not most runners, like myself are afraid of meddlesomeness and resent distraction while they are competing. One man stuck his head out from a car and yelled at Pouffe of Worcester, “I’m rooting for you.” “That’s right, you look like ahog,” replied Pouffe. The head went back into the car quickly. Some one else hollered at a young comBOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
petitor. “Are youarunner?” “No, a swimmer,” the boy replied, “do Clarence DeMar after a race in 1912.
Clarence DeMar MARATHON ® 97
you know where the next pond is?” Funny how great the barrier is between competitor and spectator.
While I can’t figure mathematics easily nor think deeply on most subjects while running with all my might, I always feel confident that I am very much master of my fate. Keyed up I am super-quick to dodge traffic and do broken field running. I am extremely alert to grab the shortest curve in the road or to get out of a troublesome bunch of competitors by ducking around autos or sidewalks. “This one thing I’m doing,” as St. Paul said; only in this case it happens to be merely running a marathon race and not preaching or practicing a better life. As I put everything I am capable of into the contest, I sometimes feel that the whole world is divided, not only as Charles Lamb said, into those who borrow and those who lend, but also into those who pay attention and accomplish things and those who distract attention and are infernal nuisances. The runners are paying attention and the rest of the world is mostly trying to distract them.
The possibilities for trivial questions or conversation or advice in a marathon race are almost unlimited; but the more of these distractions there are, the harder for the runners. Sometimes, as a Sunday School teacher, I have reflected that the race does not make for love and kindly feeling, and I’ve even thought that should I die or the end of the world come while I was in a race, my heart would not have love of anyone in it, but rather a great fear of the petty distraction of well-meaning but meddlesome fans.
There are fortunately at least three partial escapes from this feeling of fear and hate for those who bother my concentration during a race. One is a sense of humor, which is present even in tense moments. For instance, while a movie machine was grinding a few feet of film of me plodding along, Pasquale, up ahead fifty yards, turned and ran back to be in the picture. And he really expects to win the big race sometime! Then I get a laugh at the fans who call me Jimmie and call Henigan, Clarence.
Another escape from the fear and hate in my heart during a lot of the race has of late years been the wholehearted applause I receive over the last ten miles of the big marathon. People have nearly ceased being critical and give me more of an ovation when I’m eighteenth than they did twenty-five years ago when I was leading! A number of times I’ve felt tears of appreciation come into my eyes at such approval.
The third escape is the feeling of exhilaration that comes instantly one has stopped running. What a lot of cheerful chatter-boxes all the runners are when the contest is over. No old woman’s serving circle ever talked more. How they re-run this and other races! A few are somewhat boastful but none offensively so. With this relaxation and good feeling from relief of tenseness and strife I
have always been over-generous and too easily imposed on for several days. Then somebody over does it and I get back to earth.
This problem of over generosity after victory has been solved in recent years by not winning. And with all the tenseness and strife of the race and the over relaxation afterwards I have never found it to dampen my desire for the next contest. After all, do most of us want life on the same calm level as a geometrical problem? Certainly we want our pleasures more varied with both mountains and valleys of emotional joy, and marathoning furnishes just that.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE 1912 OLYMPICS
Having been given good reason to expect that I would be a member of the 1912 Olympic Marathon Team without further competition and with the advice of athletic officials and doctors that the more marathons one ran, the less his chance of winning, I went contrary to my intuition and followed their advice and laid low during the spring of 1912. While I did plenty of practice running, yet by doing as other people suggested in keeping out of competition, I was beginning a year which brought experience proving what I might already have known, that I should be myself, and not put myself out to do as other people said.
Sometime before the B.A.A., Lawrence Sweeney of the Boston Globe wrote a feature article about my going to the Olympics. During our conference he asked if I thought anyone would ever win the B.A.A. twice again. He continued, “You know you are a whole year older next time.” He shook his head when I replied, “I have a feeling that if a good runner concentrated on that one race and prepared especially for it from year to year he could win it not only twice, but a great many times.”
When the 1912 B.A.A. was held it rained, and with the incentive of a trip to Stockholm to stimulate them, the young field set a fast pace. I watched it from a press car. Sockalexis looked like a winner until after Coolidge Corner, when Mike Ryan, big, strong, and covered with grease, crashed through not only to win, but also to break my record by 21 seconds. Sockalexis was second, very close to the record, and there were four runners under Longboat’s previous mark.
After a 10-mile exhibition to satisfy Mr. Babb of the Olympic committee, I was informed that I had been selected. There were twelve on that team. The other eleven were Mike Ryan of the Irish American A.C. of New York; Andrew Sockalexis, the Indian from Old Town, Maine; Dick Piggott of Medford; Tom Lilly of Dorchester; Gallagher of Philadelphia; Forshaw and Erxleben of
St. Louis; Tewanina, an Indian from the west also running the 10,000 meters; and John Reynolds and Harry Smith, both of New York. Sidney Hatch of Chicago was also going to be on the team but had some work he thought more important, so they put on Gaston Strobino of Patterson, N. J., who had done well in a big 12-mile race in New York. A team of twelve made quite a group. Nowadays we have only three from each country. In an event as uncertain as the marathon it seems to me it would be an improvement if each nation were still allowed twelve representatives, provided that each of the twelve were allowed to work out his own system of getting into condition. The way we were handled in 1912 we might just as well have had only three on the team, for to have the group train together is like putting all your arrows into one quiver.
As the whole Olympic team gathered in New York prior to sailing on the Finland, which had been chartered for the trip, one of the Olympic committee gave us quite a lecture, emphasizing that we’d better do what we were told as no one was indispensable to the team and it would be very easy to send any disobedient athlete home. The impression the talk made on us was unfavorable to say the least. To me it seemed like an insult.
Training on the boat was so arranged that each group—sprinters, middle distance men, marathoners, walkers, bicyclers, etc.—all had their turn. Some sports writers think this was the best all-around track team the U. S. had until 1936. Certainly there was plenty of talent, and it was a pleasure to watch them and to be one to run around the ship for an hour or two and yell “track” if anyone got in the way.
During most of our practice, Mike Ryan ran at the head of the squad and set the pace. Somehow it made me think of a herd of beef critters with the leading bull ahead. Mike had made a new record and we tried to respect him for it, although he was rather dominating. For instance, he would try to trip me up if I talked, and he would baw] me out if I kept quiet for not saying anything. Once as I was eating cherries at the meal table and chucking the seeds out the port hole, one by one, I missed and one bounced down and hit Mike’s head, which at that time was red. Glaring at me, he yelled, “Have you no table manners?” There were many such incidents involving different members of the team and it was hard to please the “leader.”
Mike Murphy of Pennsylvania was head coach and Johnny Hayes, the winner of the marathon at the previous Olympics at London, was the special trainer of the marathon team. Murphy had no objections to my continuing my diet experiment. There was plenty to eat without meat, so I got along very well.
With regard to the food on the boat, the weight throwers, of course, ate more than the other people. There was a tendency on the part of Mike Murphy to watch and see that no one ate too much jam or other sweets. Like any group,
whether they have the best or the worst food, these athletes did some complaining at times. Murphy’s comment was, “The less they have to eat at home, the more they kick about the food when they’re away.” One other remark of his about the food has always stayed with me. In Stockholm the beer wagon brought the bottles around each morning, just as they do milk in this country. That gave those who weren’t abstainers, like myself, plenty to drink. One day Coach Murphy announced: “Some of you fellows are dissipating. You are drinking both milk and beer; now cut it out, drink all the milk or all the beer you want, but not both!”
Finally, we stopped at Antwerp to get in some practice and to break up the length of the trip. One of the local papers published an account about “a whole boat-load of American millionaires being in town.” (Some of us had as much as $50.) Everywhere we went there were kids begging d’argent and girls looking for handsome athletes. After we had left and were up in the Baltic Sea I overheard one of the officials say, “A great team if they are but in condition.” And the other replied, “Yes, I hope we don’t strike another place like Antwerp.”
While at the Belgium city we practiced each day in a hay field nearby. Murphy and Hayes watched us run about twenty miles each time. We didn’t race, but neither did we loaf. I didn’t feel as carefree and confident as I would with a goal towards which I could aim each day without critical eyes on me. Here I felt I had to make good each day whether I were racing or not. Alone I’d have run much slower part of the time.
So, I was rather tired as we steamed down the Scheldt River to continue our journey. Once in the narrow river the big boat rammed the bank. Dick Piggott exclaimed, “Gosh, I never knew the English Channel was so narrow as this, I thought it was much wider.” But I’ll bet they teach geography much better than that in Medford now.
When I arrived at Stockholm the first night I felt I should stretch my legs ashore and so made for the gang plank. Mat Halpin of New York, the manager of the team, met me and asked where I was going, then snapped, “I should say not; you are staying right on board.” Possibly after Antwerp the officers felt they should “do Stockholm first.” In that case a general notice posted would have prevented such humiliation to keyed-up athletes. One of my maxims has always been: “If you want men to be champions, then treat them like champions, not puppets.”
Because the race was only a couple of weeks away we had to train intensively. As at Antwerp I strained every nerve to please the coaches each day instead of using my own foresight as when unmatched.
One official said that either Ryan, DeMar, or Sockalexis must win this race for us. So we all got plenty of attention and they neglected poor Strobino who had been put in at the last day as a filler. In view of the way the race came out
Clarence DeMar MARATHON ® 101
this is significant to me. Not only did they watch, but Hayes, like the young man in Vermont who tried to urge me to run on my toes and did his urging while I was tense and in motion, frequently made nagging suggestions about stride and position of the body as we ran. I’ve always stated that when I get through with amateur running at least I’ll get out of the way and stay there and not hamper the future champions by trying to tell them something that they don’t want me to.
But don’t think the “land of the free” was the only one having tyranny in the coaching staff. One day I asked the Canadian group, “Do the blooming coaches bother you fellows?” Joe Forsythe from Winnepeg answered quickly, “If my father ever spoke to me the way the coaches do, he’d be short a good farm-hand right away!” I have never checked on many other nations, but wouldn’t it be a paradox if we found that in coaching at the Olympic games “the democracies were tyrannical and the tyrannies democratic?”
Eventually, a week or so before the race, with the nervous strain of trying to make good every day instead of once a fortnight, I went stale—that is, I got so tired that I couldn’t freshen up in a day or two. I was very lame and I had ruptured a blood vessel from the strain of too much practice. So with all this trouble I wasn’t much of a runner when the race came.
Before I describe the race I might say that the marathoners and Jim Thorpe, the great all-around athlete, were stationed in fine quarters a few miles out at Stocksund. Mike Murphy found time to be with us frequently. During one of his pep talks he said, “And Smith, (one of us) you keep away from these Swedish girls. I don’t want to see you talking to them again.”
This Smith (it’s “His Honor, Harry Smith” now) was not quite a champion marathoner in those days. But he did do some scouting around to watch the runners from other countries. Finally he gave this verbal report. “I’ve watched marathoners from Canada, England, India, South Africa, France, and Japan, and after looking them all over I’ve reached the conclusion that they are all a bunch of nuts—that is all except us.”
The morning of the race some of the Catholic boys including Mike Ryan of our team and Jimmie Duffy of the Canadians, went to mass. Having a strong urge for religious things I went with them.
This marathon was the only one where at the start they plotted and drew for each position, having a sort of military squad instead of a huddle. The day was very hot and after the half-way mark (we ran out and back over the same route) the pace was slower. A Portuguese runner got sunstroke and died the next day. This is the only time I was ever in a race that resulted in a fatality.
Soon after the half-way point, Mike Ryan quit the race. I believe one other American also quit, and the rest of us finished somehow. I was hopelessly outclassed and had to walk about a mile. This and the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Marathon in 1927, are the only two times in my life that I have ever broken my running stride in sixty-five marathons. MacArthur of South Africa finally won, with a teammate second and the ignored Gaston Strobino third, putting the American flag up at least. As a large team we made a good showing although that was not so difficult in those days when other nations didn’t have the athletes that they do today. We had seven men in the first twelve where I finished.
I was much the lamest after that race of any before or since and had to carry acane for a week, as did others. That was the result of forcing myself through the race when not in condition.
While at Stockholm, we saw some great races, including the mile in which our men Jones, Tabor, Sheppard, Hedlund, and Kiviat, (acknowledged the best in the world) were so anxious to beat each other that they neglected the rest of the field, and Jackson, an Englishman, made a last half-lap dash to win. We also saw the close 5000-meter race between Kohlemainen of Finland and Bouin of France with the Finn winning by a yard.
We all appreciated the great showing of the Finns. They were a kind of downtrodden part of Russia then, although they had a separate flag. They had not yet become good enough for us to be jealous. As we got all three places in the 100-meter dash, so Finland won first, second, and third in the javelin throw.
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The result was three Finnish flags all alone on the posts of honor. So our cheerleader called for cheers for Finland, and the 1912 group could cheer!
Immediately, the Olympic committee gave us a call, saying to cheer only for ourselves, as Russia might be offended if we cheered for Finland!
As Jim Thorpe was out with the marathoners we all know how matter of fact he took the great honors which he won. After the games King Gustaf sent over saying that he’d like to meet the great American athlete. Thorpe meditated a moment, yawned, stretched, and said, “I guess I won’t go!” and so the King has not yet met Thorpe!
A few of us stayed to visit England. The managers gave us an order for firstclass passage to Boston or New York. A couple of us managed to swap these orders for second class tickets and over forty dollars. That increased the spending money a great deal. Afterwards, however, the clerk found a small clause on the order that forbade such an exchange. But the best he could do was to refrain from giving it to the rest, for neither of us had the forty dollars intact the next day. Harry Smith and I roomed together for a very low rate. We also found eating places where we could get meals for about a nickel each. There were lots of bums hanging around who would beg for what was left. We’d usually give the first one who asked the whole dish and buy another. In 1912 these bums were the most conspicuous things in London, just as soldiers were the most noticeable things on the continent. In less than two years the soldiers, and the bums made into soldiers, were to be put to work murdering each other.
The English woman who kept the boarding house where Smith and I stayed was very nice indeed. She took a motherly interest in us and would sit up nights until we both got in and seemed to worry for fear we’d get lost in the big city. I’m sure her concern was genuine, as we’d paid her in advance.
Asmall party including George Brown, the official; Al Gutterson, the broad jumper; Oscar Hedlund, the miler; and myself came from Liverpool to Boston on the Canadian, since sunk in the World War.
The 1912 team was a great one and as a whole they did very well indeed. Ifmany of us failed to be at our best, we did not fail in vain if we knew the reason why and did not let it happen again. That is what I had impressed on me in 1912, and it helped me the next time I went in 1924.
Reprinted with permission of The New England Press. The photo on page 97 was obtained for this reprinting.
Clarence DeMar’s autobiography Marathon will continue in the next issue of M&B with
Chapter Six: ITakeaRest…. Chapter Seven: War-Time Running
This article originally appeared in Marathon & Beyond, Vol. 2, No. 6 (1998).
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