"In the old days, an announcement by a boy that he wanted to try out for a distance event on his school track team brought a gasp of horror from his parents and his friends. But Tom Jones, veteran cross-country coach at the University of Wisconsin, recently announced that only one man had died of the ninety-two Wisconsin runners who had lettered at the four-to-five mile distance since 1905, and that one was killed in an automobile accident! In 1910 an old-fashioned doctor advised Clarence DeMar, the marathon runner, that he would die from heart trouble if he kept on running. Two years later the doctor himself died from a heart attack and today DeMar, over fifty years of age, is still alive and healthy and running marathons. So any normal boy can expect to improve his health by running. It is important, however, to undergo at first a careful physical examination, and then not to overstrain after he has started running."