We object to marathon races as outworn Green traditions. Insull is the only true Greek marathon runner. That marathons should take the place of "Sunday Driver" cars for the purpose of getting the seating office flunky to the green suburbs, following in a long line the sticky men with hot feet and chewing gum, is a misfortune. If it takes more than two and a half hours to circle 26 miles of Newtons in the broiling sun, the tour is not worth while, and what does a race of 26 miles 300 yards prove for the sporting world?

The last B.A.A. marathon proved a lot. It proved that in the future a man may run as fast as he likes, according to how much fuel he wants to burn. Take Johny Kelly, for example, an ordinary plodder, but filled with a burning desire to win this inter-suberb camel-trek. He calls up Harvard University, Uni. 7600, and asks for the Fatigue Research Laboratory. He asks Professor Henderson if he can become one of "Henderson's Men" and is accepted by the great blood-chemists. Henderson gives him the dope for winning marathons, a dozen little glucose sugar pills.

Johny Kelly gets away from the mark like a flash, after a lunch of sugar, Every mile or so he takes a pill form his little bottle and stokes himself. His bodily machine going under forced oxygen draft with an almost diabetic supply of fuel, he returns to the Athens of America only a few minutes behind the non-Biochemical Finn, Komonen.

"I owe it all to hyperglaecemic concentrations of blood carbohydrates" he said, running merrily into the open arms of his Harvard trainers. "I was just an ordinary flat -foot but sugar has made me what I am."

* * *

It's really amazing the way that psychology always comes through. We had known that it was a cure-all for mental disorders and that education had dipped into it a bit but now bicycling has stepped in and made a new use for it.

The Student's Exchange, in Beck Hall, is now prepared to instruct you in the art of cycling methods that even Watson and Pavlov would approve of. Oddly enough, they tell us that it is most effective with the gentler sex. The way that the lessons are arranged reminds of that famous savior of wall-flowers, Arthur Murray.

The first lesson, which by the way takes place in the office with the bicycle set up on the stand, is a training in continued reflexes. The pupil is taught to put on the brake at the word "Stop." He (or she) is shown how to sit properly (hygienic posture it is called) and all in all everyone has a grand time.

The second lesson is conducted in back of the Union and concerns the acquisition of balance, equilibrium, stopping, starting, and turning. And in the third lesson (so perfect is the application of psychology, that the proprietors claim that the third time never fails) the student is taught poise, perfect control on the saddle and complete coordination of reflexes.

More than half of the regular customers, we are told, are girls but most of these have hardly more than passed the third lesson. Poise seems to be a stickler. And since the poise is still lacking most of them go alone on their excursions. A few of the more advanced pupils go in pairs and some even extend their trips to weekends on the Cape.

But the Student's Exchange hopes that their method will teach even poise, and then everyone will go in pairs.