Chapter Thirteen
BLANCA PEAK
Diana Bailey was a new person. Her epiphany came the fourth time Calvin Benlehr’s runners assaulted Blanca Peak, at 14,345 feet, Colorado’s fourth highest. It was early October – late in the season to be scaling a Fourteener.
Chuck Madras and Chris Nikolas had run out of sight early on the climb, but now, above timberline, Diana could see them. Coach Benlehr had an hour head start that morning, but they all caught him as they reached Turquoise Lake where Patty and a refreshments-filled Jeep awaited. Ten miles down, three miles to the summit. Five other men and two other women had quit the camp. They had forsaken the wilderness to circle tracks and golf courses in Boulder, San Diego, or Eugene.
The three Olympic hopefuls switch-backed up the rocky trail, setting off caws from ravens forced to leave their pickings. Diana glanced at her watch as the men cornered the lake and checked the interval when she reached the same spot. Two minutes exactly. Fifteen minutes later, where the trail passed a large cairn, Diana had closed the gap to 1:10.
“Seek challenges and strive to prevail,” Benlehr told them one night over the chessboard. “Every day, opportunities to excel will appear. Make it a personal habit to seize those chances.”
Diana quit thinking of herself as athletically inferior to good men on that final two-mile push to Blanca’s summit. She broke into a trot on every runnable section of trail and scampered like a marmot through the boulder field.
“Go get it, Diana,” gasped Madras, unable to bully his body any faster.
“I’ll try to stay with you,” Nikolas said hopefully a quarter mile later, but within a minute, he draped himself over a boulder to rest.
Diana summited the mountain after three hours and ten minutes of hard effort. She peered downward but the curvature of the peak obscured her companions until they heaved themselves over the final shelf, fifty yards from the top.
The sun shone brightly. The sky was crystalline blue and cloudless. Patches of snow the size of city blocks added perspective to the usually dimensionless panorama.
To a fit athlete, the top of a mountain often appears disconnected from the land beneath it. A flatness of perception blunts the experience of height.
To Diana on this day, however, the mountain was high and real. Its mass had been conquered and she had done it faster than three good men. Within seconds, her breathing returned to normal. “I could have gone faster,” she said aloud.
“I know I can run harder now,” she told the summit. “Thank you for teaching me, Mountain.”
A parapet of flat stones broke the chill wind. She nestled down to allow the sun to warm her while she waited for Nikolas, Madras, and Benlehr.
Thanksgiving, Great Sand Dunes Colorado
Dear Marcy,
Thanks for writing. It is always great to hear from you. You’re the only sister I have and we should both write more often.
I’m glad you are enjoying your new job in Frankfort and that you are able to check in on Mom and Dad more often. You are a good daughter. After the Olympic Trials, Patty and I will drive home for a long visit.
Sorry about your failed attempts to call me up here in the mountains. The cell phone towers just don’t reach out to us – too few customers. When we go to town, we see so many people jabbering on their phones. Of course, nearly half the people on the highway seem to be on the phone, too.
What do they have to talk about? Was there this much conversation going on before everyone had phones? I think not. People have just gotten into a bad habit.
Anyways, the U.S. Postal Service will have to do for now.
Last spring, when I posted my coaching ad, I got ten runners to come to our training camp. We charge $100 a month, just a token fee to solidify their commitment. Well, six months later, we’re down to three runners.
The fact they couldn’t use their phones, can’t watch TV, or use their blow dryers, etc., was too much for most of them. They were all good athletes, but they weren’t very tough mentally.
My observation over the past thirty years of coaching is that most American runners lack the focus of the Olympic aspirants of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. You remember those guys – they all drove junk cars, rarely had steady girlfriends, worked penny-ante jobs, and trained hard all the time.
Today’s kids are always wanting to go buy something or go somewhere to be entertained. That means they need a good job or be independently wealthy (and some of them are.) They want a nice car. They want serious relationships. They are constantly thinking about what they are going to do after the Olympics, or worse, talking about their sacrifices, or the wasted effort if they don’t make the Olympic team. They just have too many options.
Anyhow, one by one, they bailed out. The three that remain are Chuck Madras, Chris Nikolas, and Diana Bailey.
Madras is twenty-five and talented. He has been a track star since high school and is quite full of himself. He got kicked out of the Olympic Training Center at Chula Vista (CA) but he seems to be coming around. I would have picked him to be the first of the ten to vanish but he really wants it. If he stops driving into Alamosa every couple of days to buy stuff (CDs, sunglasses, new shoes), I’ll figure I’ve had an influence on him.
Nikolas, twenty-seven, is from North Dakota and reminds me of myself when I was trying to make an Olympic team. Nobody ever told him he was good and he never needed to hear it. He went to Dakota State, got a degree in floraculture, so he wouldn’t have to interact with people, and has trained hard for twelve years. He’s a marathoner, a solid 2:19 so far. He always wanted to altitude-train but couldn’t afford any of the usual locales.
Madras is a 5,000-meter specialist, by the way. He also thinks he’s a miler, but he’s wrong about that.
Diana is our diamond in the rough. She’s a California girl, just turned twenty-two. She won a full ride to Notre Dame but quit running her last semester. She got an English degree and was running road races last spring for prize money, so she could bake cookies. She had a little business going in South Bend – Ma Bailey’s Classic Cookies – and was making good money on the side.
Coach Palermo of Villanova sat with her in the stands at a Notre Dame track meet and talked to her. She was sick of ‘being used’ as she put it – cross country, indoor track, outdoor track, two-a-days eleven months of the year. He asked if she was done competing and her ‘Yes’ was unconvincing. He sent me her phone number along with a note: “This girl is potential World Class – rescue her if you can.”
Palermo and I have been friends since the marathon trials in 1968 where he placed twelfth. He knows how I train and coach and thought Diana needed to consider Old School methods of doing things.
I called her immediately – see, I know how to use a phone – and we talked for an hour. She agreed to stop by on her way to San Diego. She arrived on Memorial Day.
We went for a run at the Great Sand Dunes and she loved it. Next day, we climbed Blanca. She baked cookies in Patty’s oven (they were scrumptious) and that night, asked to sleep outside, overlooking the valley.
Next morning, she wrote me a check for a thousand dollars and said she wanted to train for the Olympic Trials. Her response to the running here has been amazing.
She’s a small woman, only five-feet-two-inches and weighs less than one hundred pounds. She beats the men in the sand dunes and has improved on every course we run every week. She won two cross-country races this fall, the Rocky Mountain Shootout in Boulder and the Carolina Invitational in Charlotte. Coach O’Leary of Notre Dame saw her in North Carolina and couldn’t believe it!
So, my grand scheme to have this large stable of thoroughbreds has shrunk to just three hard-working kids. But I’ll tell you, Sis, it gets me up in the morning with a smile on my face.
Patty and I were living a good life up here with the piñon jays and the ground squirrels. But having these young runners around has given us new purpose. We are all – the five of us – on a mission and it is compelling.
Patty and I won’t be coming to Kentucky for Christmas. We’re taking the kids to Brazil for a New Year’s Eve race.
Patty says hello and come visit us anytime. Keep your eye on the newspapers for Bailey, Madras, and Nikolas.
Love,
Calvin