The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-10-08
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Honolulu's Ideal Climate for Training

By Jack Densham.

Not only viii Honolulu eventually be-
come the winter playground of the
Northwest, but it has an even more in
teresting destiny before it. Before
many years when athletes are going to
train for a big event they will come to
Honolulu for the purpose.
It is only comparatively recently that
the special advantages of this climate
in this respect have come to the atten-
ton of the athletic world. but now
| people on the mainland are beginning
TO talk about the Islands as the place
where people go to train, and it viii not
be long before we have famous repre-
sentatives of all kinds of athletic sports
coming here TO get into condition.
The recent stay of DR.. Roller here
| has done much TO bring to notice the
climatic advantages of this Island for
training. The big man says that he has
| never trained with less tedium in his
| life. nor has he ever performed his ex-
| ercises with less strain and expense of
energy.
The two great advantages of this
/ climate are, that one perspires very
! easily, vet not to excess, and that the
nights are little cooler than the day
| time. 1t is some years since / trained
/ hard for any event, but I can remem-
Der enough to realize the immense adj
vantage OF the genial, yet inoppressive,
/ warmth here when a man starts in to
improve his wind.
| Except for rowing and few run
ming events, training in England for
amateurs is all done in the winter. Es-
peeially in that climate you never know
| what you are going to run up against.
/ One day when you start out for run
in the afternoon it is necessary TO rub
| the leg muscles hard for FIVE or ten
minutes to prevent tendons, contracted
| by the cold, from swapping. The next
day a pall of mist lies over the country
| and the air is so muggy that one has
not enough ambition to change clothes,
| let alone pound across country for half
a dozen miles,
/ Cross-country running has always been
| to me, as to everyone who has tried it,
/ the most delightful and exhilarating
form of exercise that one can take.
/ There is nothing finer than the thrill
Of eagerness that goes through you after
you have plugged sturdily up a plowed
rise, crossed a low hedge, and find a
| long smiling slope of stubble or mea-
/ dow rolling away from where you
/ stand Then the run down the slope
! and the long. swinging trot home in the
! dusk. the innate sense of fitness and
| power. the feeling that your stride is
out to its limit, and that YOU can keep
/ it up all the way round the world. It
/ is very good, as anybody who has ever
! tried ii viii tell YOU
/ And vet. in other climates. even when
| quite fit, YOU go through a very bad
| quarter of an hour until the perspiration
| begins to come freely. For the first
/ half mile YOU feel as though a thousand
needles were pricking your skin, your
/ feet feel as heavy as lead. and your
running c0rks weigh as much as dumb
bells. Then gradually the perspiration
begins to ooze through the pores Of your
skin and all of a sudden you wake up
| to the fact that you are feeling fine.
i That is because the strain has been re-
lieved. Your energies are no longer
/ used up in desperate struggle between
/ your blood and glands striving to force
/ the moisture out, and the cool breeze
| that swears it Will prevent it.
| Running or hard open-air exercise of
some kind IS always a part of training
and this work is relieved of its unpleas-
| ant features in this climate by the very
/ fact that there is no struggle to start
Precipitation. Of course. this same fea-
ture Is present in other places when
| training is done in summer. but nowhere
is there the same equableness of tenn
perature and the same conditions to be
met with day after day.
The advantages of the warm nights
need no description: they are obvious
TO everybody man s body very soon
accustoms itself to such conditions and
| finding the same temperature every
night is not shocked and startled by
/ sudden change. and so goes calmly on
doing its best work and growing
stronger and more supple every day.
IT Is a wonder that some Of the crack
baseball and football teams have not
| awakened to the advantages of these
Islands for training before this. In
Florida and New Orleans they have
fever. in Los Angeles they have the
cold nights, and in Mexico they have
garlic and the manana tree, while
here we have none Of those drawbacks.
Since I have been here two athletes
from the mainland have been working
here. and each has shown wonderful de-
velopment and improvement. DR.. Roller
is a wrestler and Charlie Reilly a pugi-
list. the two most strenuous forms of
800 +hnra r-hp Hax~a Saa1s