PHYSICAL ASPECT OF CROSS-COUNTRY RUNNING.

The communication in another column on the cross-country team is by a practicing physician who has been in a position to follow very closely the developments in this sport, particularly during the past season. What he says on the subject represents therefore not only the views of a Harvard graduate who maintains a lively interest in her athletics, but also the opinion of a doctor who has had opportunity to observe the effects of training.

It is the general testimony of trainers that young athletes left to themselves will do too much rather than too little, in the belief that strenuous training will bring the development of the body to an abnormal state in which any amount of competitive strain can be supported with ease. It is a common fallacy, which has often been examplified in the case of such sports as tennis in which the supervision of a trainer is seldom available. If we are correctly informed, the cross-country men give a very good example of it this fall.

Last week we showed by a comparative analysis of the scores of Cornell and Harvard in cross-country meets the great disadvantage under which a team labors that has been poorly coached or not coached at all when it meets a team coached by an expert like Moakley of Cornell. Except in 1908 when Alfred Schrubb coached, the Harvard team has not had the services of a first-class trainer. Schrubb accomplished wonders in a few weeks with the runners, but his stay was too brief for his work to be of more than temporary effect.

Cross-country running will not come into prominence again until next fall. Abundant time as given for the investigation of conditions in the sport, and for the selection of methods which will both give Harvard a team to be proud of and give the men who try for the team a chance to benefit. To make this investigation, and to establish these more favorable conditions before the opening of another season, are the duties of the Athletic Association.