Excerpts with permission from:

American Miler: The Life and Times of Glenn Cunningham
Copyright © 2006 by Paul J. Kiell, M.D.
Published by Breakaway Books P.O. Box 24 Halcottsville, NY 12438
http://www.amazon.com/American-Miler-Times-Glenn-Cunningham/dp/1891369598/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0746598-3569728?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204681559&sr=8-1

...At Lawrence, Dr. Forrest C. “Phog” Allen, the unforgettable basketball coach for whom the Allen Field House was named, observed Glenn; so did H. W. “Bill” Hargiss, then head football coach who later became Glenn’s track coach at Kansas University. Hargiss played a decisive role in Glenn’s decision to make Kansas University his school. Glenn said that in basic fundamentals in all sports, Bill Hargiss was the best grounded; a highly superior coach, well organized. “Without question,” he adds, “Bill was one of the greats.”

...“There wasn’t a great deal we could do for Glenn when he came,” Hargiss said as he sat in his living room with Myra Brown and reached back into a past rich in experience. “Both his legs were scarred to the bone, one with scars that reached to his hip, and one transverse arch in his foot that was broken.

     “As a football coach, I had been primarily interested in him as a football player. He’d been a better football player in high school than he was a trackman, that is, in the beginning. And he was a fine basketball player. It wasn’t until about his final year in high school that he came into excellence in track. His track career really began when he broke the world’s record for high school milers at the Chicago Interscholastics.

     “When he came to the University of Kansas we discouraged him about playing football. He’d have made a fine halfback or an end, or any place you put him. Glenn would excel in anything. In my opinion, Glenn could have been the world’s champion middle-weight boxer, though he never boxed professionally. Glenn was terrific.

...Bill Hargiss added: “The dedication of the boy has been reflected in the man in every field in which he has ever been active.” In a paper read before the National Collegiate Coaches Association in 1933, when Glenn was a junior in K.U., Hargiss presented in considerable detail the training program that was followed with Glenn, beginning at the time he enrolled in K.U. and continuing throughout his undergraduate years, and in addition Glenn’s mental equipment that contributed to his continuing success. After Glenn’s graduation from K.U., Hargiss continued to function as his ex-officio coach as long as Glenn ran in competition, and the same program continued to be followed. This period included the years when records for the mile were falling continually.

   Coach Hargiss added the following...:
     “We were pretty thorough with Glenn that first fall when we started him out on physical therapy. We even sent him up to Dr. Eddie Elbel in physical education. Eddie made many tests for heart reaction and response to vigorous exercise. Had him running up four flights of stairs in the gymnasium, up the stairs in the stadium, etc. We had a heavy barbell. Glenn’d drop down, get hold of that thing, throw it up on his shoulders and push up. Then he’d do the squats. To strengthen his legs.
     “One of the most vigorous things he did and did for the longest time was rope skipping. That too was fine for his legs.
     “And we had a punching bag down there. Glenn could just rattle that thing. It strengthened his arms. With distance runners, or any athlete, many times their arms will get so they can’t use them before their legs play out. You gotta be strong all over. Now here is something I know to be true: I had used all those weights we had on the wrestlers and the football boys, and when I got to be track coach I used them on all my track boys too. I used weight lifting, heavy things, lots of it, parallel bars, horizontal bars, I used all of them.
     “I never told all this to other coaches because at that time all the track personnel and trainers frowned on gymnastics, particularly on weight lifting, because they thought it made athletes muscle-bound. That was the generally held opinion that coaches went along with in those days. I even had that told to me by the head of the department of physical education in Harvard University’s Summer School of Physical Education.
     And, by golly, there’s another thing coaches turned thumbs down on in those days. That’s swimming. Yet Jack Lovelock trained more in the swimming pool than he did on the track. When he was at Princeton and he and Glenn each broke the world’s record, he spent most of his time in the swimming pool.
     “Well, that’s what we worked with and how we worked.

.....In anticipation of the very next event, the Hunter Mile at the Boston Athletic Association’s games, that morning Coach Hargiss made a statement that could apply to practically any of Glenn Cunningham’s races: “Cunningham will not be trying to break any records tonight. How he runs,” he said, “depends on the competition. He will go to the mark with the idea of winning, and for the love of racing.”

.....There was another side story. Hargiss noted that Glenn was unusually hot after winning the mile, that his mouth and lips were parched. A fellow coach suggested that a lemon might help. Hargiss searched vainly through the concession stands for a lemon. Finally he grabbed a taxi for a drive to the Loop where he was able to buy a lemon for five cents. The round-trip taxi fare was $1.40, making a total of $1.45 and creating headlines that read about how a lemon costing $1.45 aided in winning a great race. ..

     The wisdom of the day had dictated that the miler should run as fast as he could early when there was little or no fatigue. By running the second half faster than the first, Cunningham had ushered in a new concept in mile racing. “The answer,” declared Coach Hargiss, “I think will be found in rhythm.” By that he meant the runner could go as fast as possible without undue exertion by maintaining the rhythm of the stride in the first half. This would then prepare the body for the all-out exertion in the second half. Hargiss was really on to something—maybe more than he realized—when he said the answer would be found in rhythm.

.....At the very end of the year, commenting in a Kansas newspaper in response to a question asked about the Sullivan Medal, he had his own question: “Why don’t they have an award for coaches?” He remarked that the coaches get all the criticism and little of the glory and do most of the work. “I want the credit,” Glenn said, “to go in my case to Brutus Hamilton and Bill Hargiss.”