Chapter 81: Lydia’s Book

Lydia

Summer was always a bit busy as far as competition was concerned. Nadja, fresh from her first big car race had to return to the bike and if Mark’s emails were any indication, the disruption of her training schedule had not cost her much, because she had monstered the climb up the Pic de Nore in the Tour de l’Aude and was now a safe two minutes ahead in the general classification.

Perhaps her throwaway line about doing heat units in the car had not been that far off. It certainly had been hot in that car. With up to fifty-five degrees centigrade Nadja had experienced a lot more heat than I had in Chile. And contrary to popular belief ‘just driving a car’ was not an easy business. Nobody knew that better than Jenny. She had loved being allowed to test Nadja’s car in May, but she had also suffered muscle aches in the arms and a sore neck for half a week afterwards.

My training schedule had not been disrupted and I had the feeling of being in better shape than I had ever been. Everything was relative of course. No matter how good I felt, there was no getting away from the fact that things had been a lot easier at thirty-two than now at forty. I had never been good at following sudden pace changes but now, in the twilight years of my career, I was almost completely unable to. The only way for me to win was stoically running at my own pace and hoping that it would be too fast for the opposition at the end.

Thankfully, especially in this all important season, this seemed to be the case. For many years my party piece had been to let younger athletes go early on, waiting for them to run out of steam, and then pass them on the final kilometers. These days it wasn’t uncommon that I found myself in the lead as early as kilometer twenty-five with nobody able to follow. That was the only advantage I had over younger athletes, an ability to make myself suffer harder than they could. That, combined with Meri’s clever energy management regime, gave me a serious shot at winning the marathon in Sydney, at my third and last Summer Olympics.

With the Olympics in September and October, unusually late in the year for Summer games, the schedule for the big city marathons was different this year. Many of them there usually run in the weeks around the time taken up by the Olympics this year. As a result the Chicago marathon had been moved forward and I could use it as a final test.

Being in the states anyway, Mark and I had decided to spend a week in our old home in Pasadena after the race. We loved the complex web of relationships we lived in, but we both felt it would be nice to relive the quieter olden days for a week, just the two of us.

Hard work comes before the reward, as they say. First I had a marathon to run, and ideally win it.

Mark

The Africans – predictably – tried their usual shtick right from the start. Their favorites came with two or three ‘hares’ each. That were athletes, usually young rookies, who had no other job than setting a murderous pace at the start in the hope of wearing down the opposition. Those hares would rarely actually finish the race.

Of course such transparent ploy did not exactly work with someone who had been running marathons for nearly twenty years, so Lydia just let them do their thing and stuck to her own pace right from the off.

Several others, mainly Europeans, knew that staying with Lydia was the safer bet, even if it meant being left in the dust later on. By kilometer fifteen the hares had outlived their usefulness and had abandoned the race, leaving the Ethiopian and Kenyan favorites in the lead, chased down by Lydia and a whole gaggle of runners in her wake.

I could see that Lydia didn’t give a toss about what was happening around her. She had found her cadence and stubbornly stuck to it, slowly but steadily decimating the group of runners following her. One by one they hemorrhaged out the back, unable to follow her pace.

By kilometer thirty she was on her own, still running at the exact same pace as she had done since the very start of the race. I knew that look all too well – tunnel vision. The two Africans meanwhile, having pushed each other all race, were slowly but inevitably running out of fuel and Lydia started to nibble away at the gap. Despite being in a somewhat semi-conscious state, she remembered to take in her gels to preserve her energy reserves.

By kilometer thirty-five she had the two Africans firmly in sight, a fact that had not evaded their notice. They looked back with increasing frequency, a sure sign that they knew they were toast. They had started strong, but their strength was running out while Lydia had neither plan nor reason to slow down.

Inevitably she passed both of them over the next two kilometers. The Ethiopian woman actually tried to follow her, but in the process she blew up so badly, she had to abandon the race just five kilometers from the finish. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, the Kenyan resigned herself to the runner-up spot and let Lydia go, who crossed the finish line in triumph some time later with a gap of nearly two minutes.

John

It was a tape-delayed broadcast, but Lydia’s interviews always made me nervous. At least the last few had been rather innocuous by her standards. What had always gone on my effing tits was that interviewers didn’t give athletes the time to calm down. What was the point of interviewing them just minutes after they had run over twenty miles?

“Lydia,” the interviewer addressed her. “That was an impressive performance. Surely you must be the favorite for the Olympic Games now?”

We could see that Lydia’s smile was a bit forced. “I would agree that I have a fair chance, but you shouldn’t sell the bear’s pelt before you’ve actually shot it. All it takes is something as small as not sleeping well the night before and you’ll have an off-day. We came nowhere close to the world record today, and my gut feeling tells me you will need to at least come close to it, if not even breaking it, if you want to win in Sydney.”

“We have all seen your fantastic documentary,” the interviewer continued. “Do you think your current form is down to your radical training methods.”

“They are not really ‘radical’,” Lydia corrected him. “There is a lot of science involved, and yes, I think the training is a major part of it. But competing over the winter helps a lot too. I keep a base fitness level instead of having to build up in January and February.”

“It is not polite to talk about a lady’s age, but it is hard to miss that you seem to be in the form of your life at forty. Will we get to see you a few years longer?”

Lydia chuckled, and it wasn’t forced this time. “You will see me, no worries. I have it on good word, men like some of the ads I’ve recorded over the years. As far as the competition goes, the race in Sydney will be my last marathon ever, at least in competition. You will see me two more years in the winter, but after the 2002 Winter games I will definitely be calling it quits.”