This book is dedicated to every person who has ever pursued a difficult goal and followed that quest to its conclusion. – Jay Birmingham, Raleigh, North Carolina 2024
Chapter One: BILL SZYMCZAK
At this distance, details are lost: all I can see is a terrible crush of bodies. The panicked mob pushes, everyone mindless of the others, intent on escape. Somehow, I have become part of the madness.
I’m swept into the crowd and can’t control my movements. A dark tunnel–perhaps an escape route–lies ahead. We rush, rather than run, everything distorted in the press of bodies. Fear envelops me as gaps to freedom appear, then vanish. I try to break clear but cannot. “Relax,” I say, but it is impossible.
Suddenly, I can’t get enough air. Others pile on top of me. I fall down, struggle upward, then am crushed down again by the mob. Panic hammers me. In seconds, I will suffocate!
No air! That awareness squeezes a moan, then a scream from inside me, but I am voiceless; no sound escapes.
God help me! Please don’t let me die!
Bill Szymczak convulsed to consciousness in the bright afternoon sunlight of his apartment. The alarm clock buzzed like a chainsaw. He smacked it silent.
That dream! I was dreaming I was a blood cell! It felt like the last hundred yards of a race.
He caught his breath and stood up. It was time for the afternoon workout.
He pulled on the yellow shorts he’d worn this morning and had draped on the doorknob. Just as quickly, he yanked them off. They were too damp and smelly. In the dresser, he found the blue ones with tiny pink psychedelic dots. No one would notice. A white singlet, a pair of socks, and his trail shoes completed the ensemble.
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THIS VIEW OF SPORT By Ken Davis
“Working on a Dream”
Just 18 months. That’s all the time they have left. They are Olympic Hopefuls, among the best athletes in the world. Two summers from now, nearly every country in the civilized world will send its finest track and field athletes to the next Summer Olympic Games.
In the United States, we do not know the names of any of our Olympians. Ours are chosen a mere six weeks before the Games in the most severe forum since gladiators fought for their lives in The Coliseum.
In the Land of the Free, athletes must qualify for–and then compete at–the Olympic Trials. World record holders are not exempt. The most dominant athlete in her event can awaken with the flu and fail to make the team. It has been described as the most demanding test in the world, tougher than the Games themselves.
The Olympic Trials. The phrase stirs passion and dread in the hearts of serious athletes from Bangor to San Bernardino.
The Olympic Trials. Throw away the form sheet; all bets are off. In America, Olympians are self-selected. Win, place, or show–they go. Fourth place is no better than 24th, simply more heart-breaking.
The Olympic Trials. No selection committees, no politics, no former champions receiving automatic berths. It is the fairest and cruelest of systems to pick a team.
Across our broad country today, thousands of young women and men are running workouts that would make the average professional athlete weep. For three or four hours today, and every day, these mostly-amateur athletes will run, jump, and throw, lift weights, and punish their bodies for a dream.
They will work and dream that they will achieve a performance that will qualify them to compete in the Olympic Trials. Then, they will work and dream that they can place in the top three.
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Bill Szymczak decided on the park. He decided on The Slope. And the number he decided to run was twelve.
The Slope stood defiantly, 80 feet high at the far side of Veterans Park. From the kiosk where he stood to the ancient burr oak at the top, lay a quarter mile of coarse bluegrass.
Bill strode the first two hills at 3/4 effort to warm up his climbing muscles. This morning’s ten-miler draped him like a heavy cloak.
On his third rep, he sprinted the hill in 75 seconds. The walk to the bottom was too little recovery. The next run took 78 seconds; the fifth sprint took 83.
He shuffled down to the shelter and slumped onto the stone bench. Maybe this is enough, he thought. No sense beating a dying horse. It could spoil tomorrow’s training.
What would Pekko of Finland do? How would the Tanzanian, Kangaa, handle this workout? What about Corbin in Cleveland? Madras in Colorado?
In seconds, Bill was up, cast a glare of contempt toward The Slope, and he tightened his shoelaces. Then, knees buckling, he sprinted up the hill as hard as he could. He jogged slowly to the bottom, then without pause, kicked his unwilling body into battle with gravity. He ran The Slope twelve times.
Two miles home. Bill started walking but, after a block, made himself jog. This, he thought through the weariness, will make me better than the others.
He stumbled up the steps and bumbled through the screen door into the dusty apartment.
“That you, Bill?” hollered Sarah from the bathroom.
“Yo! You going to work out soon? Got any food?”
“There’s baked potatoes . . . in the oven . . . and fruit salad . . . in the fridge.” Her voice was punctuated by some distraction.
The tall, brown-haired woman swept past him in the hallway where, standing on one leg, Bill battled balance and fatigue to unknot his shoelace. Sarah was strangling her ponytail with an elastic band, holding a comb in her teeth. Bill chuckled. She looked like a pirate with a knife clinched in her mouth.
She smacked him on his butt and he toppled over, a slow-motion slide down the wall, still clutching his untied shoe.
“How’d your workout go?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, burst out the door.
“Bye-bye,” she called over her shoulder.
“Bye, Sarah. Have a good run. Catch you tonight,” he blurted.
Five o’clock. In an hour, he was due at the theatre. They paid him just six dollars an hour but the schedule was right and the work was easy. Six hours a night, six nights a week, taking tickets and sweeping the aisles.
At midnight, Bill Szymczak walked home and lay back on his lumpy mattress. In the other bed, Sarah snored the soft sighs of a tired athlete.
He awoke to the alarm at 7:30 the next morning. By nine, he had run eight miles through the neighborhood streets. At ten o’clock, Bill reported for work at Northgate Mall. Four hours of mowing and trimming, then he could catch his afternoon nap.
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7:30 a.m.–Viren Loop in 64:12
3:15 p.m.–12 x Slope (77.4)
20 miles
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