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RACING FOR A WEEK
T H E six-day bicycle racer is
probably the best life insurance
risk extant. In spite of
the fact that he undergoes the
most terrific physical strains
which have ever been devised for sports,
not one of them has ever died, although
six-day racing has been an annual entertainment
for twenty-four years. Insurance
rates show that of the hundred odd
men who have partaken steadily of this
form of exercise eighteen
should now be
dead.
A six-day race comprises
this: teams of
two men each ride
twenty-two pound bicycles
continuously for
day for one man during the New York
race in December, 1916, was: two dozen
soft boiled eggs, six undercut tenderloin
steaks, fifty slices of buttered toast, ten
cups of hot meat broth, thirty side dishes
of fresh vegetables including spinach,
string beans, potatoes and peas, ten
quarts of milk, a little beer and ale, cigarettes
and sweetmeats. A rider gains
from three to four pounds during the
race and is able to make just as much
speed on the sixth night as on the first,
according to
s t a t i sties.
The average
distance
covered
every hour
is over nine-
SIX-DAY RACING IS FAR FROM A DEADLY GRIND
144 hours around a board track in an enclosure,
spelling each other in such a way
that each takes shifts of from fifteen minutes
to four hours. Each man spends a
large proportion of his time off the track
in eating ten meals every twenty-four
hours and snatching sleep for the remaining
time off watch. The dietary for one
256
teen miles. Each rider demolishes about
five tires during the six days of his
strenuous work.
The riders live in a colony at Valesburg,
a suburb of Newark, New Jersey,
where they race twice a week for the six
summer months, drawing larger crowds
than professional baseball.