Sport: Marathons

Start. In Manhattan grizzled Publisher Bernarr Macfadden, 66, and 46 other entrants in a race he sponsored, set out to walk to Dansville, N. Y. (325 mi.) nourished only by cracked wheat, brown sugar, cream and raisins. Among the contestants were: two grandmothers, from Houston and Detroit; one Irving Malman, 28, whose mother had him stopped by police when the race had gone two miles; a 69-year-old Memphis lumberman named Frank May, who bet a friend $3,000 he would finish the walk. The friend accompanied the race in a car pulling May’s automobile trailer, equipped with icebox, piano, hostess and Lumberman May’s Negro valet.

Finish. In Los Angeles, one Galen Gough, vaudeville strongman, threw two 200-lb. beer kegs in the air and caught them with one hand, permitted three men to stand on a steel-studded platform placed across his chest, held an anvil in his teeth while an accomplice hit it with a hammer, lay down on a Persian carpet while an eight-ton beer truck drove across his chest. He had just finished a 30-day marathon designed to show that beer is strengthening but weight-reducing. In the course of the marathon, Strongman Gough subsisted solely on beer, of which he guzzled 1,080 steins, missed his goal by 1½ Ib. by only reducing from 259½ to 211. Said he: “I feel swell.” He was lugged off to a hospital.