PIT STOP AT THE RACE TRACK

Cars in auto races move at very fast speeds around the track. Some of the races are hundreds of miles long. The drivers try to keep their cars near top speed the whole time. Of course, high speeds are very hard on the cars. Often parts break or wear out during the race.

The race driver depends on the other men on his team, the mechanics who take care of the car. Mechanics never race, but they share in the joy of winning. Their job is to make sure the car will last long enough to finish the race. An old saying goes, “To finish first, first you must finish.”

This driver is pulling off the race track, into the pit. The mechanics are already running to help. When the driver enters the race again, the mechanics will have put fuel in the car. They'll have changed some of the tires. They'll have checked the oil. Perhaps they'll have added more oil. They'll have repaired any problems in the car. The driver will not have rested long, though—the mechanics will have finished all this work in less than one minute!

RUN FOR THE MONEY

Today at 7:30 a.m., 840 runners began their marathon race around the city. Most of them will stay in the race to the end. The prize is money—enough money to pay for a trip to another race!

Now it's ten o'clock, and the winner has just crossed the finish line. His time was two hours, thirty minutes, and 25 seconds.

The man with the stopwatch is clocking the race. He'll have clocked a different finishing time every few minutes for two hours, when the last runner comes in.

The other runners are still racing. They'll finish the race at different times. Some will have run for three hours; some will have run for three and one-half hours; and some will have run for much longer.

When they finish, they'll be very tired. They'll have run half the time through city streets. The streets were closed to traffic, so they won't have run into any cars. The rest of the time they'll have run along the river.

Each runner will have used his own special method to keep going. The young boy counts the miles. He'll have counted one mile every seven minutes. The older man watches for friends. He'll have seen a number of people finish before him, but he doesn't care. He'll have run every marathon race for thirty years when this race is over. He hasn't ever won any prizes for speed, but he'll have finished more races than any other runner. Today alone he'll have run twenty-six miles, the length of the marathon race.

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