Chapter 35: New Endeavors

Mark

We ended up having a lot of fun, but a vital lesson was learned as well. The song would have been just as hilarious had Meri known we were writing one. With our silly secrecy we had caused unnecessary tension and it provided a stark reminder that our complex relationships would not work without the fundamental trust between us.

A week later, two days before we would fly back to Americaland, Lydia and I watched Meri and Femke’s track cycling debut in the city of Dortmund. Both had started training for it as it would become an Olympic discipline for 1996. The men had had it since 1984, but Atlanta would see a women’s points race for the first time, and there was no way Meri would miss the Olympics on home soil. Since she had abandoned the crowded field of athletes competing for spots on the Olympic track and field team, she was almost secured a place in the less contested cycling disciplines. In fact, unlike with the men, the talent pool in American women’s cycling was so shallow, there was talk that Lydia might get a spot for the time trial race.

An indoor cycling track is 250 meters in length, basically a banked oval, so the race would run for 100 laps, with intermediate sprints after every tenth lap with 5,3,2 and 1 point awarded to the first four over the line. Femke wasn’t a sprinter at all, so she was in it for the other option to win a points race – lapping the entire field, which paid 20 points per lap gained.

Although track cycling was a lot more spectator friendly, obviously, it was rather complex to follow the on-track action. Meri had done well on the intermediate sprints, finishing third on the first two and winning the third one, tying her on 9 points with a Duch girl after lap 30. Directly after the third sprint, when the tempo had lapsed momentarily, a French lady with Femke in tow tried to break away from the pack. They quickly gained about half a lap, but the French girl had overcooked it and dropped back, while Femke soldiered on alone, in full time trial mode now. Since she was now ahead of the pack on her own, she took out the intermediate sprints after laps 40 and 50 by default, leaving Meri and the other sprinters to fight over the scraps. Both second places went to a Duch girl ahead of Meri. The Dutch was now leading with 18 points to Meri’s 12 and Femke sat third with ten points.

Finally, by lap 58, Femke had caught up to the back end of the bunch, gained a lap, and took delivery of another 20 points, bringing her points tally up to thirty and the lead in the race. However, the 20 points for the lap gained, actually meant she also lost that lap again, so technically she was now back on the same lap as everyone else. That rule was necessary, since else gaining a lap would mean the win in the race by default as a rider who was one lap ahead would take out all intermediate sprints by default through just sitting at the back end of the group.

The Dutch sprinter girl took out nearly all remaining sprints, only being beaten by Meri once, so she won by forty-three points, with Meri in second on thirty-nine and Femke romped home fourth on her tally of thirty points.

Not bad for two riders who had been doing this for the first time competitively, although Femke wasn’t too pleased about narrowly missing the podium again, just like in that Tour in Belgium. I promised her to boink it all better at home.

Lydia

We came home from Germany and Jonjo came over to hand me a letter. He was currently on his term break and had looked after our mail in our absence. Usually his mother did that when we were away and he was at university.

As Mark and Jonjo trundled out to the backyard, each holding a beer and eager to share stories, I opened the letter to find an invitation from USAC, the national cycling body, telling me I had been granted a spot at the National Championships in Seattle, both road race and time trial.

I thought about declining the invitation to the road race, I had nothing to gain from it as it was hilly, but the inclines were too short, and would most likely result in a bunch sprint or a win of a breakaway group, but I was sure Meri would get invited too, so I thought again and decided I would race after all, if nothing else to support her as much as I could, and additional exposure would surely please our team’s sponsors, not least of all John’s friend Bill O’Connor.

Mark

It was good to see Jonjo again, after over a year. And boy had he gone places. Back when I had seen him last time, during his short visit to Germany, he had been plagued by usual student problems – a chronic lack of money. But that was thankfully a thing of the past as he had scored a part-time job on one of the smaller NASCAR teams. They didn’t pay him a king’s ransom, but it was enough to get by and he had a job in a field he loved the most.

Without knowing Jenny, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to racing, but Jonjo lived for it, especially the engineering side. It was great to see him make his way, and I hoped I would get to see him a bit more often than once a year.

Once Jonjo had left, the clothes could finally come off and not much laundry was produced during the next few days. In fact, if it wasn’t for some boxer shorts of mine and the apron she wore when cooking, there wouldn’t have been any. I got to see the love of my life in her birthday costume all week.

Lydia

I had almost gotten used to wearing nothing at all, and my perfect tan was testament of that, but since a race was to be had, I had to get clothed again, eventually. And we had to fly. Since the race was to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, it wasn’t a short trip either.

We had to make refueling stops in Canada, Iceland and Berlin, where Mark got off the plane to get some work done for John, while I stayed on for the last leg of the flight to Russia. I was pleasantly surprised when Nadja Fedorova welcomed me at the airport. We had seen each other a few times at races since she had done the charity run with us a year and a half ago, but since we were usually fighting it out for the win, we hadn’t spent much time together.

This time she took me on a tour through her home city, showing me the stark contrast of Russian life less than three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. On one hand you had magnificent buildings in the inner city, but also drab concrete tower blocks, broken windows covered with cardboard. The whole country was torn apart between a few mega rich people and the poor masses trying to make a living.

Of course we got to see none of the downsides during the race. The route had been carefully selected to show only the brighter sides of the historic city. Not that I got to enjoy the view much. The race was fast from the very start. Determined to make the most of her home town advantage Nadja set a stiff pace all the time. Not even the Africans tried anything funny. They were busy enough keeping up with Nadja.

I was keeping to my usual routine. I found a pace that I was comfortable with, and I stuck to it, even when it meant letting a group of three go after twenty-eight kilometers. Nadja, a Kenyan and an Ethiopian woman dropped me, but I stuck to my rhythm, now all on my own.

That decision should prove right. Over the last five kilometers I caught and passed both African athletes, who had run out of steam trying to stay on Nadja’s heels. I could see on the timing boards that I was slowly gaining on her, but I simply ran out of distance, finishing second, about 50 seconds after Nadja had crossed the line.

Meri

Altitude training in July isn’t fun. Granted, it wasn’t quite as hot at 8.200 feet as it was down in the valley, but that knowledge was only of minimal consolation if one had to start in said valley and slog it up the mountain twice a day. It had been easier the year before, when we had been here in April.

My climbing had never been any good, but concentrating on sprints had made it even harder. I could still cling on when Katrijn had already long been dropped, but that wasn’t saying much. I suffered like a dog.

The only light at the end of the tunnel was that we would go almost straight to the holidays after this camp. As soon as this torture camp was over, the plan was to return to Emden for a week, during which Femke would contest the Dutch National Championships and then we were off to Prerow again, for two weeks of naked fun and games.

Femke

Had someone told me two years earlier that I would go on a naked holiday two years in a row, I would have suggested that person better adjust his or her medication, but this was exactly what was going to happen.

I had just bagged two national champion titles. I had won the time trial both in the U23 category and – for the first time – in the elite category. Unfortunately I wasn’t getting to parade my national champion’s jersey anytime soon. The time trial event in Denmark didn’t happen this year and for the next two weeks I wasn’t going to wear anything, mostly, except of course when we would be training during the day.

What I did get to parade around though, was a bigger set of tits, a fact that did not escape notice of the resident boobs aficionado. Of course he attributed it to his excellent massage technique and the copious amounts of fresh air they were getting whenever I visited them in Emden, but the reality was that it was nature’s way of taking the piss out of me.