Chapter Twenty
MIDWINTER
John Corbin shivered. The damp wind chilled his cold, sore muscles. His feet landed like blocks of ice on the concrete street. Gray slush filled the gutters; the temperature was twelve degrees and felt colder. Gray clouds reflected the city’s streetlamps. It was another gray day in Cleveland.
His morning route took him through downtown, just a quarter-mile from The Old Mercantile Apartments where he lived. At 5:00 a.m., he had the alleys and streets to himself. The men emptying garbage bins nodded their recognition as John raised a gloved hand in greeting. Distance runners and trashmen worked while the city slept.
Today was unpleasant. John ran past the 24/7 Spa on Superior Street and envied the few early birds who ran in place on their rubber-belted treadmills, watching the invariable bad news on television. His footing was poor. He slowed to a walk on several icy turns.
Two miles into his eight-mile morning course, he passed the Key Tower for the hundredth time since moving back to Cleveland. A delivery truck stood before the raised loading dock door. A river of warm air flowed across the sidewalk, giving John a moment’s relief from the numbing cold. He stopped, walked back to the street-side thermal, seeking a few more seconds of comfort, when he noticed a staircase leading into the bowels of the building.
John headed up. It had been nearly a month since he’d been able to run hill repeats because of the ice. An uphill without slipping! What an unexpected treat.
The building security guards will discover me and throw me out, he thought. But nowhere on the 57-story ascent did he see anyone. The climb was uniform to the top: Eleven steps, a landing, eleven steps, another floor.
Despite his high fitness, John could feel the strain in his calves and quads by the 15th floor. By the 30th, he reached his anaerobic limit. He slowed to a fast walk, pulling himself upward on the handrails and reached the 55th, the last available floor.
He slowly jogged down, stuffing his hat and gloves into his pouch. By the time he reached the street, he felt fully recovered.
John stashed his clothes behind a steam pipe and headed up again. Thirty stories is about right, he decided, and finished his inaugural climb at five reps.
“Once a week, until spring, I will run this mountain in downtown Cleveland,” he promised himself.
* * * * *
Cecil Medley limped through his long run, a twenty-two-miler on the rolling dirt roads of northeastern New Mexico. The interval between a pain-free landing on his left foot and the searing pain in his right arch was too brief for real relief.
As all runners do, Cecil feared that this pain signaled a premature end to his Olympic dream. Is it a stress fracture or arthritis? Will I damage a nerve by continuing? Running like this is likely to transmit the injury to my knee or my hip, he thought.
But the impulsion developed on the way to becoming a serious distance runner has its own momentum. Like an up-stoppable flywheel, the brain and the muscles continued to function. Through last week’s hundred miles in blizzard conditions, to this week’s one-hundred-and-twenty miles through the slush and mud of the Winter Thaw, Cecil never seriously entertained the notion of a day off.
I’ll ice it when I’m done, take a few aspirin, give it a good rub- I’ll be OK by tomorrow.
Cecil turned onto the final five-mile leg of the course, into the teeth of another cold front dropping down from Colorado. He zipped his Nebraska State windbreaker to his chin and retied the drawstring of his hood. His hands were going numb, doubly wet from perspiration inside his mittens and mucus from his nose on the outside.
Forget how you feel, Medley. Think about Jackson, Mississippi, and the Olympic Trials. Suck it up. Your preparations are almost done.
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7:00 a.m. – to the Arch and return in 2:17
estimated 22 miles
9:00 p.m. – 90 minutes in weight room