Super-Marathon

Not since Queen Marie of Rumania crossed the land has there been such a transcontinental spectacle in the U. S. One hundred leather-lunged, semi-nude runners jog out of Los Angeles. Judges, timekeepers, trainers, newspapermen, wives, best girls, small brothers jostle along behind the joggers in an enormous motor cavalcade.

Over mountains, across deserts, between corn fields, down a thousand Main Streets goes the jogging army--Arabs, Finns, great Danes, bandy-legged Italians, blackamoors, Kansans, Californians, Georgians, the Tarahumura Indians of Chihuahua, Mexico, whose sandals go clump-hua-clump-hua. . . . They sit in ditches and catch their breath. They sleep in haystacks, hotels, Hupmobiles. They suck lemons, swallow dry toast, regird their loins and start jog-jog-jogging again. Only the fools sprint. It is 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to Manhattan, where a $25,000 prize, fat vaudeville contracts and the plaudits of a multitude await the first super-marathoner to stagger across the finish line within 100 days of the starting pistol crack....

Such was the spectacle which Charles C. Pyle, spectacular sport promoter, announced last week he would try to conduct early in 1928. He went as far as actually posting $25,000 for the winner, promised to collect cash for nine more prizes from cities along the route. The route, obviously, will be determined by the highest bids. The winner will have to average 32 miles a day, estimated Mr. Pyle. The race, said he, was inspired by an Arab messenger (unnamed), who ran 90 miles during the Riff uprising. Anyone of any color, amateur or professional, may enter Mr. Pyle's 100 days, become the super-Pheidippides.*

* He ran approximately 25 miles, from Marathon to Athens, with news of a Greek victory over the Persians, in 490 B. C.