Why? The Science of Athletics

CONSIDERATIONS IN RELATION TO COMPETITION 137 sent feeling of relief. What has really happened is that his respiration and the action of his heart have caught up with his urgent need for more oxygen and so he establishes a new level in which the respiration is able to deal with the increase in the waste products of exhaustion · which has so nearly put him out. This type of second wind is; however, at the best but transitory ; for there are poisons, other than the waste matter which the respiratory adjustment deals with, accumulating in the system which will continue to emphasize the condition of fatigue. Some time ago, at one of the Wingate Memorial Lectures in America, a very full explanation in relation to second wind was offered by Dr. Paul Martin, Switzerland, himself a great runner, for in the Ig28 Olympic Games he was only beaten by a yard in tHe Boo metres by D. G. A. Lowe, Great Britain, whose time of I min. 52 2/5 secs., was but half a second outside world's record. Dr. Martin's theory was that when the second wind, that feeling of renewed energy that the runner experiences, comes on, a certain alkaline substance, created or multi– plied in the blood by the process of training, begins to neutralize the acidity which has been produced by exercise– activity running on into the beginnings of fatigue. As the lecturer pointed out upon that occasion, human blood has generally an alkaline reaction, and after a prolonged effort has created great acidity in the muscles, if these acids are not eliminated by respiration, then there is excessive excitation of the centre of respiration and the lungs breath~ quicker and more deeply than is normal, in an effort to re-establish the normal balance between the oxygen income and the exhaust of carbon dioxide. One knows, of course, that after a race is over the runner should keep on moving for a while; that is why great runners like Paavo Nurmi, Finland, and Jack Lovelock, New Zealand, always trot an extra lap after finishing a race. They are not running round to collect the applause of the multitude, as I have heard suggested