PEDESTRIANISM
A wonderful increase of popularity has lately attended the art of walking. The steady improvement made in speed and endurance by professional and amateur walkers and the introduction of international contests have brought this about within a few years.
When the firm of Beadle and Adams published their first Dime book of Pedestrianism, the only American walker of reputation was Edward Payson Weston. The record of professionals and amateurs had then developed nothing greater than the performances of Captain Barclay of England, who first did a thousand miles in a thousand hours. Weston's famous walk from Portland to Chicago caused the only ripple of excitement in the sporting world on the subject of walking from the time of Barclay up to 1870.
Since that period, things have changed greatly. Weston's achievements have inspired others, and those others have not only equaled but excelled Weston on many occasions. The names of O'Leary, Rowell, Corkey, and "Blower" Brown, all men born in the British Islands, have been recorded above those of Weston at different times; but it remains to the glory of the American pedestrian that in 1879 he beat them all.
All these changes and ups and downs in pedestrianism for the last ten years have made the old books obsolete, and the publishers of the former Dime Book of Pedestrianism have determined to issue a new edition, fully up to the times in all respects.
Besides practical instructions in walking, founded on the different styles of noted professionals, we shall annex much matter never before put in a handbook, concerning the preparation of tracks, measurements, timing and scoring, for the information of that large class of people living in country towns and villages, who have plenty of walkers, but no experience in the conduct of matches, and no opportunity to see how things are done in first class matches.
Every one can walk, but not every one can become a great walker. Any young man of good health and strength can learn to walk five miles in an hour, but the number of men who can walk twenty-five miles in five hours is very small, and will always remain so. If we take the population of any town or village we shall find that out of every hundred young men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, there are about sixty more or less given to athletic sports, twenty who are very enthusiastic about them, and six or eight who would make good walkers, runners and general athletes. Of this six or eight, there is generally one who is better than his fellows, and he becomes the village champion in one sport or another.
This is about the true proportion – one per cent – of the young male community, that is capable of being taken at random and converted into good professional walkers. A general system of early physical training would soon increase this proportion, but as we are never likely to see any such system adopted we must be content with what we can get. Out of those capable of becoming great walkers and striving to become so, the proportion of second rate men is quite large.
There have been great long-distance walkers before, and probably will be again; but a man of the peculiar constitution of Edward Payson Weston is very seldom met with. Other men have, at times, beaten him; but he has outstayed them all at last in endurance. No other athlete on record has remained among contestants of the first-class for so many years, for be it remembered that Weston's career as a walker began on Thanksgiving Day, 1867, the day on which he arrived at Chicago from Portland, and that so late as 1879, twelve years after, he was able to do 550 miles in a week against the best men of England, at a time when his latest rival, O'Leary, had utterly broken down. Ten years after his first appearance on the track, he was able to give O'Leary, in his prime, a tough battle, making 510 miles in six days, and none of his antagonists can say as much for themselves.
The average duration of a great long-distance man, whether walker or runner, seems to be about two years. It was in 1876 that O'Leary came to the top of the wave, and in 1879 he went under. Weston alone keeps on, apparently as fresh at forty as he was at twenty-six.
All this argues in Weston very great physical power and strictly temperate habits, and he possesses both in a remarkable degree.
There, however, the praise ends. As a scientific walker, Weston is inferior, not only to O'Leary, but even pitted against such amateurs as Harry Armstrong, of Harlem, C. Bruce Gillie, of the Scottish-American Club, or a dozen others we could name. When he was in his best form, about 1874-5, it was the remark of an English trainer, that Weston was "a mystery to him; that he didn't see how he could walk at all on the bad system he used, and that any other man would have broken down utterly in the attempt." Weston used to get through his tasks, and does still, but only at the cost of terrible fatigue, which he might have saved himself on a better system.
O'Leary, on the other hand, is an example of how the best training, constitution and system may be neutralized and overthrown by over-confidence and dissipation. As a scientific walker, O'Leary has no equal, and were he of the same temperate habits as Weston, he might still head the list as world's champion. As it is, the rows of empty champagne bottles that were taken from his tent at Gilmore's, when he broke down in the Rowell match, were the evidence and symbol of his ruin.
It was not in his case, as he said in the Spirit of the Times, that "runners can beat walkers." O'Leary, himself, in four or five matches, had beaten all the time ever made by runners, save that of "Blower" Brown; but the O'Leary of those days had succumbed to high living, and a poor excuse was better than none.
Yet, the man's system was, and is, magnificent, and enabled him to do respectable work against Hughes and Campana, when he really was not fit to go at all.
Had he possessed Weston's temperate habits, or had Weston possessed O'Leary's science as a walker, the result would have been a pedestrian wonder that would have lasted many years longer than O'Leary.
WALKERS vs. RUNNERS
The success of Weston and O'Leary in their long-distance walks in England surprised the Britons greatly. Up to the time of Weston's appearance in that country, Englishmen had been accustomed to consider themselves the best walkers in the world; but the two Americans – the native and the naturalized – soon took the conceit out of them. The best English long-distance walkers were Peter Crossland and Henry Vaughan, who had both done excellent work in matches of the kind then practiced in England. But the introduction of six-day contests, first started by Weston, put these professionals on unfamiliar ground, and they found that a man who could walk a hundred miles in one day was not able to cope with these American wonders, who could finish five hundred miles in six days. The Englishmen laid their defeat to the right cause – unfamiliar methods; and Sir John Astley, a rich sporting baronet, to put both parties on an equality, introduced the six-day "go-as-you-please" match, soon to supersede all others. It was thought that runners would have the advantage over walkers in this match. Their backers claimed that by going over the ground faster they would gain more time for rest, and so in the end go further. The first Astley Belt match falsified all their data. In the famous contest at Agricultural Hall, London, from March 18th to March 23d, 1878, Daniel O'Leary covered 520 1-4 miles, in 139 hours 6 minutes 10 seconds, confining himself to walking after the first fifty miles. He had against him the great English long-distance runners and the best long-distance walker, Vaughan, all of whom he defeated decisively. Vaughan stopped at 500 miles – a score he has never since equaled – "Blower" Brown retired at 477, and "Corkey," who had things all his own way for the first three days, broke down utterly on the fourth; while Hazael and Rowell were earlier satisfied that they had no chance.
In the same year O'Leary defeated with ease John Hughes and Peter Napoleon Campana, surnamed "Sport," both runners, and seemed to be secure of holding the Astley belt for life. Indeed, had he not, like most sporting men, been deceived by the exaggerated reports of Campana's prowess, he might be champion to-day.
The reason for this statement is simple. Campana's Bridgeport record, as it turned out from after investigation, was a deliberate fraud, got up by some low sporting men, who probably did not at first dare to hope for the success which it attained. They began by running their man on a short track, and when that fraud was discovered made a merit of having the course publicly remeasured by the city surveyor. The more important part of the fraud was not discovered till after "Sport's" ignominious defeat by O'Leary, and then only by the