Chapter 99: Soldier Hollow

Nadja

As soon as I had arrived in Salt Lake City, courtesy of a small charter airline that Ian had recommended, I went to the next rental desk and got my hands on a veritable land yacht – a brand new third generation Lincoln town car. The thing was vast, but how they managed to get just 200 horses from a 4.6 liter V8 the size of an asteroid, was a bit of a mystery. But hey, with its wobbly suspension the thing wasn’t made to be raced around tight corners anyway.

But it made things a lot easier for the team, since they had all come in on different flights – Stella from Iceland via New York, Marshall and the technical staff from Amsterdam via Boston and our coach Uwe had pulled some strings and had hitched a direct ride from Munich on a charter flight that brought in the German team. That meant I had shuttled between the airport and our hotel in Soldier Hollow three times until everyone was there.

Lydia

After six days in that damn hospital, both Femke and I felt like we were made of wood. For more than twenty-one months, all the way back to the spring of 1999, we had trained daily, without any meaningful interruptions, so the six-day hiatus had not done us much good.

But hey, we had the world’s most talented masseur with us, and as an added bonus we both nearly passed out at the end of it. That either of us had gone a full week without at least two or three orgasms was even further in the past than a six-day training break.

Telluride, Colorado was at nearly nine-thousand feet altitude, the highest altitude training we had ever attempted. Only the cycling races at Pikes Peak had lead us to higher altitudes. But back then, when I even won it two times, I had been in peak condition, not coming out of a hospital after a near death experience. Femke and I knew that training at such altitudes with hematocrit values as low as ours was risky, but it was our only chance to save what was left of our season.

Since we were on medical suspension until just days before the world championships, the WADA had offered a therapeutic use exemption for medication to boost out hematocrit level to 36%, which was the absolute lower end of what was considered normal for a competitive athlete, but we had declined immediately. We didn’t want to open that Pandora’s box. Staying away from performance enhancing drugs was a matter of principle for us and we decided that we would rather abandon the season if we couldn’t recover to normal levels.

The medical staff at the hospital had assured us that, although low even for non-athletes, or hematocrit values were not dangerously low. They had however voiced their skepticism about going to such high altitude right away. Femke and I were prepared to dismiss those warnings, but Mark was having none of it. A quick phone call and we were told that Ian would be bringing the team doctor from our old cycling team over, so we could do our training under proper medical supervision.

Femke

Lydia and I had noticed quite early that we had set ourselves quite the challenge. With a very low amount of red blood cells to distribute oxygen throughout our body, and a rather low amount of oxygen in the air to begin with, we were soon gasping for air like fish out of water. Since the doctor was still somewhere over Iceland at best, we had decided to play it save and sleep with CPAP cannulae up our noses. It made it much easier for the time being.

On the next morning we took it very easy. Mark had organized an effective refurbishment of the little hotel we had booked. It was not the usual luxury accommodation we usually preferred. Instead we had booked the entirety of a modestly comfy, small, family-run hotel. Seeing what we were prepared to pay to have the entire place to ourselves for four weeks, the owners couldn’t believe their luck and didn’t object that we essentially cleaned out their basement to install three treadmills for running practice.

The elderly owners, a Mr. and Mrs. Kohler were all too happy to have us. Not only were they earning more than they already usually did at the height of the winter season, they were also happy to have Lydia specifically. Mr. Kohler was a descendant of German immigrants, and although his ancestors had arrived nearly two-hundred years in the past, and he was about as German as I, he was still proud of his ancestry.

Since the doctor was still in a plane, somewhere above Denver, probably, Lydia and I did only some very light jogging, and even that taxed us quite a bit and we ended up having to don the CPAP masks again after two hours. This was starting to look like an impossible uphill struggle.

Meri

“Fucking hell,” I swore under my breath, looking at the printouts before me.

“Bad news?” Regina asked as she looked over my shoulder.

“These values look horrible,” I said. “That’s Lydia’s and Femke’s sensor data from this morning, well morning over there. You get better values from two grannies having a grudge race around the car park with rolling walkers.”

“They don’t really have a chance, do they?” Regina asked me.

“It depends,” I explained. “The first three days will decide. Once they reach thirty-five or thirty-six hematocrit, the value should shoot up. It’s like muscle memory for the body. The trouble is, can they reach that level in just three or four days?”

Mark

Things were not looking too rosy in “Camp Exhaustion”. The doctor, although jet-lagged, didn’t waste much time and did a complete check-up. Well, considering that he hadn’t called for a priest to read them the last rites, it could only mean he saw some chance to recover. However, he hadn’t looked pleasantly surprised by their blood values either.

One of the changes he had ordered was that Lydia and Femke would hold off on any training for the next two days and instead forego the use of additional ventilation unless absolutely necessary. The discomfort of feeling like suffocating would be substantial, but only that way the thinner air at altitude could work its magic. Their red blood cell count was so low the simple act of just being here should produce first results.

It wasn’t easy for me either. Sitting on the sofa with both of them almost desperately gasping for air was like someone stabbing me in the heart repeatedly. Every fiber of my body screamed at me to put the ventilation masks on them, but I couldn’t. I would destroy their last chance to get fit in time for the world championships. That looked like a very long shot right now, but Lydia and Femke were determined to give it a try.

The broadcast of the first race from Soldier Hollow the next day came as a welcome distraction. Lydia and Femke had passably become used to the breathing difficulties and they no longer looked like starting to hyperventilate at any moment, but their breathing was still accelerated and laboured.

When the FIS had introduced the new Sprint discipline last year, they had also introduced another novelty – the skiathlon. It was a mass start event that began as a 5 kilometer classic style race. Then every athlete had to enter a changing area where she changed skis and poles to continue the race for another 5 kilometers in the freestyle technique.