Secret of Clarence DeMar's Endurance Discovered in the Fatigue Laboratory--Athletes' Blood Chemically Analyzed

One of the reasons for Clarence DeMar's supremacy in 25-mile cross-country jogs has been discovered in a study recently concluded by Assistant Professor D. B. Dill in the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory at the Graduate School of Business Administration. Interested in the relation of the chemical condition of a worker's blood to his general efficiency, Professor Dill put the well-known Melrose runner and 24 other persons through a series of 20-minute runs on a tread-mill, in order to determine the amount of lactic acid accumulated in their blood.

"When the muscles are working so fast that they cannot get enough oxygen for their recovery process," Dr. Dill explained, "lactic acid accumulates in them and leaks out into the blood, producing or tending to produce exhaustion. We placed DeMar on our horizontal treadmill, geared to a speed of 9.3 kilometers an hour, and found that the amount of exhaust acid he had accumulated at the end of twenty minutes was almost negligible."