Chapter 29
CONTEMPLATION
Mary spent the night alone in her hotel bed. “I felt like a tossed salad,” she told her father when he inquired how she had slept.
“Jeremy wanted to be alone,” she said. “He could have stayed with me or in the athletes’ hotel. He drove up to Gallatin to a bed and breakfast.”
Jeremy Stanfield sat on the porch of the Hunter Ridge B&B and stared at the mountains that were covered with flowering rhododendron and summer haze. The smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. He rocked back and forth in an oversized rocker and pondered his last two years.
Much that we do as humans is futile, he thought. A man could survive with minimal effort, living off the land; finding or stealing what food he needed; sleeping in barns or under the stars. Thoreau was right – we enslave ourselves with ownership and the pursuit of comfort. But Thoreau could not have guessed the utter senselessness of athletics.
To what end do men and women subject themselves to daily discomfort? The athlete eschews normal human appetites and deliberately pursues physical and psychological stress. If all behavior is either appetitive or consummatory, as Ratner and Denny postulate, where does an athlete’s training fall? Which of Maslow’s needs are being met?
Fewer than one in a dozen track athletes gains any recognition for their efforts; perhaps one in a hundred is recruited by a college for their ability to throw a heavy object, run fast or far, or hurl their body into the air.
One in a thousand might realistically aspire to qualify for a national championship; one in ten thousand, a chance for international competition. Earning a livelihood through athletics is rare, though many try. Fewer than five thousand athletes worldwide earn a living from track and field, even for a short time. A single illness or injury can fell the champion for good.
Why did the ancient Greek philosophers hold athletes in high esteem? Did they live vicariously through those who sweated and bled? For every Olympic victor there were ten thousand who tried and failed – perhaps ten times more who thought it was possible.
And yet, despite the odds and the utter senselessness of both the struggle and the goal, I am driven, Jeremy thought. I am driven, as certainly and passionately as if running were a morsel of food for which I would fight – as if I were starving – to the death.
So here I sit, rocking on a porch in Tennessee, Jeremy mused. Six hours from now, I’ll meet O’Neal and ten other men who have trained as hard as I have. We’ll race each other for eight minutes, jumping barriers set on an artificial running surface, splash seven times into a water pit, endure physical discomfort and possible humiliation – for what? For the goal of placing in the top three in the race, so we can do the same thing against runners from other countries in six weeks.
Jeremy rocked and rocked and after an hour of bewilderment, returned to his room, packed his duffel bag, and drove himself down to Knoxville.
Place in the top three. Yes, I’ll run myself blind this afternoon so I can do it again.
Kerry O’Neal was still the favorite. Las Vegas odds-makers put him at 2-1. Stanfield was 4-1 to win but even odds to make the team. In his luxury suite at the Southerner, O’Neal was filled with dread and determination. I can’t let another American beat me. I own this event.
O’Neal leafed through his training log. Workout after workout was drawn on the pages, meticulously timed, perfectly executed. Reading through his log books always gave him confidence before a race.
I’ve beaten every one of them before, he assured himself. None of the others have been to the Olympics. These are my third Trials. I’ll go to the front at halfway and simply fight off every attack from there to the finish.
* * * * *
Tia Wapiti raced three consecutive days to win the 400-meter hurdles. As the twentieth qualifier in the open 400-meters, she had scant hope of advancing past the first round – it was just two hours after her hurdles victory.
“You’re in Lane 9. Run eyeballs-out from the gun,” Animas told her, leaning over the grandstand railing.
“You’ve got a rest day tomorrow. Your fitness is higher than any woman you’re racing. You’ll be a target for the entire field to key on out there, but they’ll tie up when they see they aren’t catching you.
“In the stretch,” his eyes agleam with confidence in her, “some of them will fade. You are used to being very tired over the last hundred meters. No hurdles, Tia. Just fly.”
The race unfolded as if Animas had choreographed it with all eight women. Tia’s stagger placed her sixty-five meters around the first turn. At the gun, she sprinted her fifty-meter curve, down the backstretch, and into the last two hundred. Around the final turn, her peripheral vision caught one, two, three rivals inching past on her left. She focused on putting one foot before the other, four inches from the line. Tia reached the last hundred meters in fourth place; for fifty meters, it appeared she would stick there. “Perfect form, Tia,” Animas said in her brain. With thirty meters to go, Heidi Lannin began to stagger. Tia strode past her and into the semifinals with a PR time of 49.71 seconds.
“I miss the hurdles, Coach,” Tia said, panting. “Give me twenty-four hours to rest and I think I can make the final.”
“You will make the final. Go over to the park,” her coach commanded, “and get in fifteen minutes of jogging. I’ll meet you at the practice track tomorrow afternoon at three.”
“Good job, Tia.” He winked. Tia grinned back, nodded, and walked toward Confederate Park.
After four races in three days, Tia rode the shuttle to the hotel, phoned her mother, then fell into a deep sleep. She awoke at 11 a.m. the next day, after fourteen hours in bed. For once, it felt good to be a sack-rat.