Chapter 40: Tricky Schedules

Mark

Ah, the joys of summer in Germany. That usually meant boobs, lots of them, but just like last summer I spent the run up to our annual holiday in Prerow with Regina, as the rest of the women were away in altitude training camp in Switzerland.

Most of the time was actually spent alone. Regina and Bea were off to College until about 4pm. My auntie, now finally and fully recovered from the last aftereffects of her various injuries from two years ago, had started a 15 month re-qualifying course to become a management assistant in Bill O’Connor’s company, which footed the bill for the education. Her fluency in English had impressed them so much they had offered her the job of personal assistant to the boss of O’Connor’s German subsidiary, which was currently a management bigwig from LA just a few years shy of retirement age, but by 1998 that job was slated to go to Bill’s son Ian upon his eighteenth birthday.

Since he loved flying his business jet himself, Bill O’Connor, John’s old friend and confidant, found enough excuses to be in Berlin regularly. Although the headquarters of his German subsidiary were in Emden, they also had a large office in Berlin, not far from Tempelhof airport, which meant Bill could avoid too much ground-based travel, which he wasn’t really fond of.

I had met him occasionally, especially when John accompanied him. They were ride-sharing whenever they both had business matters to take care of in Berlin. Last week that had been the case again, and I had taken them both to watch Jenny race at Senftenberg. Since the bambino class consisted of seven to nine year olds, who were all in school, the season was somewhat oddly timed, mainly to coincide with the school holidays. That’s why there were three very early indoor races, followed by the majority of races crammed into a period from mid-May to the end of July and then two final indoor race weekends in October when most federal states had their autumn break.

This wasn’t making it any easier for people who found it hard to finance the hobby of their kids, but thanks to men like Bill O’Connor this didn’t apply to Jenny. And since his company paid fifty-thousand quid for their logos on Jenny’s kart, it was only fair that he would get to see her in action.

And thank the gods we had chosen a weekend during which she hadn’t had any troubles and won one heat, finishing the second in third position. The barnstorming win in Emden had been one thing, it was her home turf after all, but Jenny wasn’t Mary Sue, so the reality of being a racing driver quickly caught up to her. She had done a mostly flawless season in kart slalom the year before, but cones didn’t defend their racing line, nor did they employ dirty tricks, and she didn’t have any tracks to learn. The cones had always stood in a neat line with a rules regulated distance between them.

Her third race, when we had been on St. Kitts & Nevis, had been a total disaster. At the time Femke had offered the theory that Jenny would suffer the same growth problems as she had, which was partially true. Jenny was definitely behind her fellow eight year olds, but not as much anymore as a year earlier. She had gone through a bit of a growth-spurt, which messed up her sense of balance, especially as that growth came with an obvious gain in weight.

It was apparent that Jonjo’s idea where the ballast should go had been off for that weekend, and she struggled with the handling all through the weekend, posting two very disappointing mid-field results, dropping out of the top three in the championship standings too. The only impressive thing to take away from that weekend had been that she wasn’t crying about it, like some other kids who had had an off-weekend. It made her even more determined to get back to her winning ways and she wore out the floor in Emden’s karting center day in and day out after school was finished.

Someone who had taken that messed up weekend personally, was Jonjo, who felt bad for having given her the wrong advice. He was being silly of course. For the first two race weekends his calculations had been spot-on, resulting in two wins in Emden, and a third and a fifth place in Regensburg. That had been pretty impressive for what was essentially a lot of guesswork with only a 2D track layout to work with.

Nonetheless, he flew out to Germany a week before the first race in May after the big break, worked with Jenny in Emden for a few days and then accompanied her to the race in Sigmaringen. That had of course caused a few raised eyebrows. Germany wasn’t racist by any stretch of the imagination, certainly not like some corners of the US, but when it came to sheer ‘whiteness’, the karting circuit in Germany could rival a NASCAR event.

Normally other kids had their karts worked on by their fathers or other relatives. None had ever shown up with a dark-skinned Bob Marley lookalike as a personal race engineer. That made an even bigger splash than the fact that beforehand she had been the only one with a female mechanic. Auntie Bea was training for an office job, but as a long-time owner of a Wartburg car, she was quite handy with a spanner.

Jonjos good work helped her regain her mojo and a third in the first heat, followed by a fourth place in the second one had helped her climb up to third in the standings. But that improvement had come at a price in more ways than one. First of all her excessive training had put a season’s worth of mileage on her engine, which meant we had to buy a second one, and she had gone through much more tires than expected. Thankfully, due to the windfall from the spring photo session, this didn’t put too much of a dent into Meri and Regina’s bank account.

The other price it came with was jealousy from other kids. Many of them came from wealthy families, karting was expensive after all, and many of them had spent their short lives used to the fact they were always getting their way. And none of them took kindly to being beaten by a small girl who had even more resources at her hands than they did. None of them had Bob Marley coming to their rescue, and none of them had a full set of sponsor stickers on their karts.

That led to a series of on-track incidents that she was mostly blameless for, but that knowledge is of little help if you find yourself pointing in the wrong direction. That meant wins were hard to come by after her barnstormer on home territory. In fact, her win in the first heat at Senftenberg, that John, Bill and I had watched, had only been the third all year and she was still stuck in third place in the championship table.

But, she had thoroughly impressed her main sponsor, especially by how well she spoke English.

Lydia

True to expectation, Femke didn’t have as easy a time as before when she contested the Dutch National Championships after we returned from the training camp. She won the U-23 category for the last time, as she would be too old the next year round, but could only score a third place in the Elite category. Her changed training focus had paid off though as she also finished third in the road race on a course that was as hilly as it gets in a country that is known to be flat as a pancake.

Her real big win though came in a points race on home turf in Groningen. Inspired by having been a well taken care of bed partner of Mark the night before, she won it on 44 points, having lapped the entire field twice. Meri, who took out some of the intermediate sprints not won by Femke during her lapping runs, finished a fine third. Celebratory boinks in the evening ensued.

Speaking of which; since we had had most of our kinky itches scratched on St. Kitts & Nevis and during the fun and games on New Year’s Eve, we had all agreed that our annual trip to Prerow would be a little less silly games and a bit more train and relax this year. 1996 was going to be an Olympic year, we all had to decide which disciplines we were going to go for.

But before we could go there, the Track & Field World Championships loomed.

Regina

Two and a half years ago, Jenny and I had nearly drowned while trying to go to Sweden, and now we were sitting in a stadium in Gothenburg watching Lydia romp to an easy win over the 10.000 meters. Unfortunately this wasn’t the real thing yet. Since there is only so much space on the stadium lap, two preliminary rounds had to be contested of which the first eight and the four ‘lucky losers’ with the best times qualified for the final.

The final, three days later was a much harder affair. Knowing this was her weaker discipline, Lydia didn’t really go too hard. Not that she could to begin with. Since she was the only athlete who did both the 10K and the marathon, she had fallen victim to the schedule, having run – and won – the marathon the day before. Mark had done his damnedest to massage her legs into shape again, but it was obvious from early on that she was simply too knackered to challenge for the win. A Portuguese and two African women had opened a gap to the rest of the field and Lydia was hanging on for dear life to even stay with the others.

Mark had urged her not to start in the first place, but Lydia was convinced that, although pretty much out of any chance to win, she could manage to beat the Olympic norm of thirty-one minutes and fifty seconds, which would qualify her for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

I wondered if she had overestimated her reserves, as she kept hovering about the lower half of the main group, but she soldiered on, her face a grimace of pure pain. She was running on fumes, but as more and more athletes hemorrhaged out the back of the main group, she finished sixth, narrowly beating the Olympic norm by a slim margin of nine seconds.

She fell to the ground after crossing the line, completely exhausted. She would really need the coming two weeks in Prerow to recuperate.

Meri

I doubt too many Olympic preparations were usually made by a bunch of naked people sitting around a camping table on a Baltic sea beach, but then, we weren’t exactly usual people.

“So, you two are going to try the triathlon in two days, right? Just ten days after you nearly killed yourself at the worlds?” I asked and Lydia nodded.

“It’s not exactly the Ironman, more like a semi-professional event, but we won’t get too much bad press when it doesn’t work out. It isn’t televised, so...”

“How’s the clothing change going to work?” Mark asked. “It probably won’t bother anyone here in Germany if you just strip down to nothing and change your kit, but I know for a fact that a lot of organizers explicitly forbid full or partial nudity in the changing area. You would have to go to a special tent and lose a lot of time.”

“That’s why we’ve chosen this race to test ourselves,” Femke said. “Over here in East Germany nobody will give a damn if we just strip down to nothing. If we think it is worth doing it seriously, then we’ll have to train the transition process more intensely anyway, which means we’ll probably get one of those two-piece thingies you can do all three disciplines in.”

“You’d be pretty fucked if you fall off the bike in those things,” Mark argued, but Lydia only shrugged.

“That’s the risk that comes with it.”

“I’m more concerned with the packaging,” Femke explained. “You only get a very small place to deposit for stuff, so the more clothes and shoes we take, the tighter the space becomes, and it becomes easy for someone to inadvertently knock over your stuff.”

“We’ll just wait and see,” Lydia said. “That’s the point of testing, isn’t it?”

“I guess you don’t really have a tactic ready?” Mark asked. “Femke will be faster in the water, you’re evenly matched on the bike, and Lydia will be faster during the run.”

“We’ll stay together for the swim,” Femke explained. “Lydia hasn’t got any experience with mass start swimming, you can easily end up getting knocked on the head or get knocked out by someone’s heel crashing into your jaw.”