32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
ercise for a period of five and a half years. Their statistics do not 
show appreciable variation from those of the one third who engaged in 
running only. 
Naturally and yet unexpectedly the men who trained on an aver- 
age of about ten weeks a year, nothwithstanding they numbered less 
than two fifths of the whole number, had nearly twice the percentage of 
injuries. In attempting to fit themselves for the strain of a distance 
race in such a short time, they overworked, with consequent bad effects. 
Curiously enough, the men who trained twenty-six weeks a year and 
continued running from seven to twelve or fifteen years. had no in- 
juries at all. It might be supposed that this vigorous exercise con- 
tinued for such a long time would drain their vitality. Exactly the 
contrary has been the case. With one exception, all claim to be more 
vigorous than the average man of their age, and the exception de- 
clares himself fully as vigorous. 
One half of the athletes began running as schoolboys, and %8.5 
per cent. made good in college, as compared with 75 per cent. of those 
who did not take up the sport until they entered college. Twice as 
many of the boys who ran only a year or two in school made good, as 
of those who ran three or four years. This seems to indicate that boys 
who begin at school, if they do not begin too young, and if they are 
brought along gradually, learning stride and pace and developing 
stamina, have a slightly better chance than even the more mature man 
who takes up the sport after he enters college. There is nothing sur- 
prising in this, as it requires several years to bring a distance runner 
to his best. C. H. Kilpatrick, winner of the American and Canadian 
championships, *94, 795 and 796, and until recently holder of the world’s 
record for the half mile, began running while at school, as did also 
George Orton, intercollegiate mile champion for several years. Melvin 
Sheppard before becoming an Olympic champion was famous through- 
out the middle Atlantic states as a school-boy runner. It is a common 
saying, however, that school-boy stars usually “fall down” in college 
and unquestionably many runners of promise are spoiled before they 
get there, but, generally speaking, the school-boy star fails to develop 
into a college star because he has stepped from the narrow limits of 
school competition into the much greater range of college athletics. 
T am inclined to believe that unless he has been overrun, he equals in 
college his school records and usually surpasses them, and while the 
data to support it are not at hand, I should expect this to be particularly 
true of distance running, at which a man should get better and better 
the longer he keeps at it. The evidence shows, furthermore, that boys 
who were over sixteen years of age when they began running did twice 
as well after they entered college as boys who began under sixteen. Hyi- 
dently the boy who begins too young is throwing away his chances in 
college. 
