Why? The Science of Athletics

248 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS such a pace in all his races that no opponent of his was ever left with the ability to sprint even the last fifty yards, and yet I doubt if we ever saw Nurmi fully extended when he was at the peak of his great career. That Nurmi's running system was the Mechanical right one can be proved scientifically, and Pacemaker Professor Kennelly of Boston, U.S.A., has suggested that more than one long distance running record might easily be broken by the aid of a mechanical pacemaker, on the principle of the electric hare used in greyhound racing, travelling at a constant speed and so adjusted that the runner, by keepingup with it at his known "best" speed, would just break the existing record. Such an apparatus, actually in use at the White City Stadium, London, is shown in Fig. rg, Plate 3· In this way runners would be trained to produce a constantly increasing even pace until the personal "best" speed of each man trained in this way would be discovered. Ideally, the man who can run a mile in 5 mins. should cover 352 yards in one minute, while a mile in 4 mins. 8 secs., which approximates to the three best world's records of the present generation, would mean a constant speed of just over 425 yards per minute. Speed, however, must be adjusted to the distance to be run, just as the motorist has to change his gears to suit the gradients over which he is driving his car. The "Optimum-time-constant" being, Optimum- obviously, the essential fact.or in record Time-Constant breaking by distance runners, I have pre- pared a tabulated statement which gives both the progressive lap times and the time per 440 yards lap in practically all the great one mile record-breaking races that have ever been run. Of all the runners whose names and performances are given in the scheduled table I suppose the three who might have been capable of equalling, perhaps of beating, the amazing times returned by Cunningham, Lovelock and Bonthron were W. G. George, whose professional