|
3:41 - A Novel |
| |
by Dennis Aiden Lockhart |
| |
There is a point in every race when you have to decide whether you are going to go for it or if you are going to let the race come to you and, you know, hope that things work out for the best, but I’m not that kind of runner, or person, so I generally try to take the situation by the balls—most times, when I want to be aggressive during a race, I flash in my mind that classic picture of Roger Bannister crossing the tape as the first person to ever break four minutes for a mile, and that usually charges me up—and I remember this one time, it’s a mile at Fresno and we’re about ready to hit the half and I’m in pretty good position—this was the days before all those big screen jumbotrons or whatever they call them, where the runners can look up and see how they’re doing and where everybody else is in the race—so we’re coming up to the half and they’re calling out the times and they’re at 1:55, (which is fast, because, for some reason, there were some really good runners in this race) and I’m third, thinking to myself that that’s a pretty good split, since I hadn’t been training that hard lately because I had had a cold for the last week and was eating almost nothing but chicken noodle soup, like, three times a day, because they always say that chicken soup is the best thing for you when you have a cold, but soup does not have many carbohydrates for energy—well, the noodles have carbs, but there aren’t that many noodles, and I tried that double-noodle chicken noodle soup that Campbell’s made, because it had a lot more noodles, but it was more like a casserole than a soup, and so I went back to regular chicken noodle soup, because then you can use the store brands, which, although they are not quite as good as Campbell’s, are not bad, and a lot cheaper—so I would mix two tablespoons of corn starch with some of the broth from the soup, add some frozen peas and maybe an egg white (without the yolk, because that’s all fat) and brown rice for some extra protein and carbs, and, presto, you have a Chunky soup for about eighty-five cents—and so that’s all I’d been eating for the last week, and I’m hitting the half in 1:56, thinking to myself that so far, so good, and wondering if I should start pushing it on the third lap, because that’s when I usually make my move, not like the Kenyans—the Kenyans wait until the last lap to make a move sprinting to the end and looking like Usain fucking Bolt at the finish—and then see if anybody else has got the balls to go with me when there’s still 660 yards to go, but this time I really didn’t know if I should or not, maybe just let the race take care of itself, you know, when I thought about the Gospel where Jesus tells the story about the master who gave each of his three servants a talent and left town and the one servant invested it and made ten, the second one invested it and made five, and the third one pussied out and buried his one talent in a hole, and when the master came back, he praised the two servants who invested and increased what they had, but he really got pissed at the servant who just tried to save the one talent he had, who was too afraid of failing to try and succeed, and threw him out in the street, and I figured that that applied to me here, and by this time we were halfway through the third lap, almost exactly 660 yards from the finish—I never talk in that meters bullshit if I can help it, although it’s hard not to if, for example, you’re running a 1500 meters instead of a mile, but even then I try to break it down into yards, just to piss off the suits—and I’m still in third, ten yards off the pace, feeling pretty good, thinking we’re still running about the same pace—a 1:56 half is 58 for each 440, which is a 29 for a 220—so I’m figuring we are right around 2:27, with a lap and a half to go, and if I jack it up right now I can do the next 220 in a 27, which would get me to the 1320 at 2:54 with a 440 left, and that should really piss off everyone else in the race, who are just trying to go through the motions on the third lap while waiting for their Big Finish, so I just take it up a notch, pass the two guys in front of me, who each give me a look out the corner of their eye like “Are you shitting me?” and cruise around the curve, heading into the last 110 of that lap balls-to-the-walls—well, not really, since I still have about 550 yards to the finish, but, you know what I mean—and I really feel like a machine, legs turning over smoothly, breathing easy, just like that old Jag I used to have, a ’67 XKE—that was the last year for the enclosed headlights, because the Feds made them replace them in 1968 (halfway through 1967, actually) with headlights that stuck out, which really ruined the smooth hood contours of the XKE (the government is always messing around with people’s lives)—and I started to think about that as I was finishing the third lap, waiting for the bell for the last lap, which you love if you’re leading and hate if you’re fading—expecting 2:54, and I got a 2:52, which really surprised the hell out of me, and I almost wanted to stop and go over to the timer and say “Are you shitting me?” but I just kept on trucking, and the people in the stands—there was only a couple hundred of them because this meet was no big deal to anyone—were trying to get me to run faster, and I knew why they were doing it—they didn’t care about me, they just wanted to see a record (American, meet, whatever)—so they could brag to their friends that they were so smart by going to this jerk-off track meet everybody else ignored, and now they had a lifetime memory while their friends just went to the mall or something, and that’s how people really are, you know, only thinking about themselves even when they try to appear as if they are cheering you on—but I said to myself that these people were dreaming, because the world record then was like 3:45 or something, and even the American record was under 3:50, and I might get the meet record—big fucking deal—but to get anywhere near a world-record time I would have to run like a 54 flat for the last 440 after I had just run a 56, with the chances of me being able to do that not real good, although the chances of me leaving a lung on track if I tried were excellent, but, what the hell, I would do what I could—maybe not the servant who made ten talents, but the one who got five, still not bad—and down the backstretch I was dying to look around and see where everybody else was, if they were fading or holding on, and the looks on their faces, because I knew they were just shitting—I hadn’t run this good since the first three laps of the Olympic Trials—but turning around while running is a great way to fall down and like I said before, we didn’t have jumbotrons in those days—not that this crappy-ass meet at some junior-college football stadium would’ve had one anyway—and so I had to just imagine how those guys were reacting, and what Judy would’ve been thinking, if she would still ask what happened, seeing me nail these other bastards, and as I ran I even fantasized for a moment or two that I was stomping on the divorce papers she had served me, and a guy on the backstretch with a stopwatch called out to me as I passed him that I was at 3:21 with a half-lap, 220 yards, to go, and I realized I had just run a 29 for the last 220, and if I could keep that pace, I would be under 3:50, close to the American record, and a personal best for me, someone who was supposed to be over the hill and at the bottom of the valley, and something to make everybody who wrote me off shit in their pants, assuming I could keep up the pace, but I felt strong and as I rounded the final curve to the finish my body seemed to be working almost independently from my brain, as if I was just along for the ride, which was okay with me, but I couldn’t figure out what was happening, and I didn’t even try to dig in for the last 100 yards—which is actually the way you are supposed to run, nice and relaxed, because I remembered that story about Bill Bowerman, the guy who helped start Nike, when he was the track coach at Oregon and he told all his sprinters to line up and run relaxed, at three-quarters speed, and they all ran their personal bests—and all I could think about was that maybe all that corn starch had given me extra energy, and I was still trying to figure it out when I crossed the finish line, running through some cheap-ass red ribbon that must’ve been left over from somebody’s birthday present that they stretched a couple of feet across the track, with the ribbon wrapping around my body and face, when some guy runs up to me, shoves a stopwatch in my face and screams at me, “3:50.7… 3:50.7!” and then some other guy, I guess he was a reporter, asked me how I did it, and I just said “Corn starch”, jogged around the track, got on my bike, and rode away.
That’s all I remember. |
| |
| HARDMAN RUNS 3:50.7 |
| |
| Tim Hardman runs the fastest mile by an American in the last two years,and then disappears back into the obscurity from whence he came. |
| |
| New York Times News Service |
|
|
(NYT) Fresno, CA Running the kind of race that he seems to undertake every few years—in other words, just often enough to make people think he might still have the goods, but not often enough to make them believe it—Tim Hardman once again proved that he is not just yet ready to become the answer to the trivia question: Which American miler disappeared just before achieving his full potential? A 3:50.7 will do that. What it will not do,unfotunately, is propel Hardman back to the front ranks of American milers, a position that seemed so firmly his before the last Olympic Trials, when he blazed around the track for three and a half laps in record time and then collapsed, enduring a death march on the last half of the final lap, collapsing again at the finish and having to be resuscitated right there on the track.
No one has ever doubted Hardman’s talent, only his methods of employing it. Had he been able to continue his torrid pace in those Trials for the last 200 meters, he would have broken the 1500 meters world record by two full seconds; if he had backed off somewhat, he wouldn’t have made history, but he would have made the U.S. Olympic team. Instead, he did neither, breaking not records but, instead, the hearts of all those who had such high hopes for him.
And today’s performance shows that those hopes were justified, then and perhaps even now. What it doesn’t show is that he has yet been able to harness that talent in any meaningful and sustained way. He could just as easily, assuming he even races again in the next three months, run fifteen seconds slower the next time he sets foot on a track. Nobody knows—including, it would seem, Tim Hardman.
In fact, even setting foot on a track is a major production for Hardman these days. He wasn’t officially entered in this all-comers meet today at Fresno City College, a warm-up for the very important Modesto Relays next week. Hardman basically rode his bicycle up to the starting line about twenty minutes before the race and asked if he could run. For better or worse, almost everybody in U.S. track knows who Tim Hardman is, and so, even though he could produce no proof that he was registered with the U.S. Track and Field Association, those in positions of authority at the meet essentially shrugged their shoulders with a collective “Why the hell not?” He stripped down to some gym shorts and a t-shirt, put on his spikes, and jogged around the track and infield, warming up. He looked good—nothing like the stories and the rumors about him getting ready to enter a Howard Hughes look-alike contest—and his stride was as beautiful as ever. The man is an athlete—below the neck he is the complete package, but, unfortunately, above the neck seems to be another story. The race itself was classic Hardman. It is unknown if he was aware of the quality of some of the entrants in the race—Paolo Rubiano from Italy and the Irishman Pat Ryan, two finalists from the 1500 meters in the last Olympics, were in the field. Hardman might have recognized them, assuming he still pays any attention to the sport when he is away from the track itself, but it is doubtful that he knew why they were there. This race was simply to be a glorified workout for Rubiano and Ryan. They had just arrived in America three days before, and the purpose of this race was simply to get them ready for next week at Modesto, nothing more and nothing less. Of course, you have to understand that what we regard as a workout and what they regard as a workout are two completely different things. Rubiano and Ryan alternated the lead for the first two laps, setting a scorching pace, blistering through the half-mile at 1:55. The plan was then to cruise through the third and fourth laps, saving their closing energy for next week. The two Europeans seemed comfortable in the lead and unaware that Hardman was only about ten yards off the front. Had they seen him, they probably wouldn’t have known who he was, since Hardman’s fame, such as it is, has never spread much beyond our shores. It now may, because when Hardman charged past the two on the backstretch of the third lap, he definitely got their attention. Rubiano and Ryan glanced at Hardman as he passed them and then at each other, the looks on their face suggesting that they didn’t know who this was, or why he was doing this. They continued at their own pace, while Hardman charged to the front, as has been his MO for the last seven or eight years. Hardman continued pushing himself right to the finish, being rewarded with the best time in the mile by an American in the last two years. Perhaps, in his mind, he was making up for the disaster at the Olympic Trials.
The problem is figuring out what exactly is going on in Hardman’s mind. This reporter has always given any gifted athlete—and, make no mistake, that is an accurate description of Hardman—the benefit of the doubt in almost everything they do in their chosen field. They are so finely-tuned, both physically and emotionally, that they always seem to be on the edge of catastrophe. It is a very fine line, one that Hardman seems to have crossed, in both directions, on numerous occasions. This was amply documented when this reporter asked about the race, and Hardman gave a two-word reply—“Corn starch”—then jogged over to his bicycle, put on his jeans and sweatshirt and, still wearing his track spikes, pedaled off into the late afternoon sun.
The melodramatic part of all this—I am loathe to call it tragic—is that Hardman’s performance and the time it produced are not likely to be recognized in any official capacity. Hardman has not been tested—or located—for so long that, in these days of rampant cynicism about dramatic improvement by unknown or unsupervised athletes, there is little chance his time will ever be anything more than footnote. Were he, of course, to suddenly avail himself of the opportunity to be tested for performance-enhancing drugs, this might change, but that is not likely. Nothing really is at stake here but Hardman’s reputation, which needs a great deal more than one good drug test and the course record at some all-comers meet to repair the damage done to it. Hardman’s cycling off into the distance doesn’t seem to indicate an inclination to cooperate with anybody—or any body—about anything. It is generally assumed, given his erratic behavior over the last few years, that he has been under various degrees of psychiatric care, with the prescription drugs such a regimen would involve, those drugs undoubtedly precluding a clean test or, at the very least, a clean bill of health.
The discussion about Tim Hardman has always come down to this: He has great talent; what will he do with it? We are no closer to that answer now than ever. |
| |
Dennis Aiden Lockhart has granted The Book Zoo non-exclusive rights to display this excerpt. |
| |
|
|
|
| |
| This author chose not to include contact details. Please email any enquiries to us and we will forward them on to the author. |
|
|
| |
|
| |
| Reviews |
| |
| Posted by Zoo, 10th June 2011 at 9:48am |
| |
| This excerpt really caught my attention. The author is writing intimately about the subject of running, in a kind of breathless literary style that puts you in the runner's shoes. I want to read more! |
|
|
|
|
