The Front Runner

rush of feeling successfully. Then I saw something that made me forget about sex. He had fine muscle tremors in those beautiful thighs of his. He was really tired.
    "You have trouble with cramps?" I asked.
    "Sometimes." He was bending, busy, not looking at me.
    "At night?"
    "Yeah, sometimes at night too."
    "You must not be getting enough calcium and magnesium," I said. I was liking less and less what I saw.
    That magnificent body of his was on the edge of exhaustion. "And you've had a lot of injuries."
    "Stress fractures," he said. "I was red-shirted all last year. One in the shin, one in the metatarsals. I try to drink a lot of milk, but I seem to have these brittle bones." He was shivering, standing straight now, looking at me with something like an appeal in his eyes.
    "Get those sweats on," I said.
    "Yeah, right," he said, and pulled them on.
    "Well," he said, "I don't know what you're going to think about my program. I was doing what Lindquist told me to. But obviously we were doing something wrong."
    "Why?"
    "Because I should be improving, and I'm not. I mean, I've been putting in a lot of work, and no results. My best events are the 5,000 and the 10,000. I know there's a sub-28-minute 10,000 inside of me there. But I can't get down to it."
    I stood looking at him thoughtfully, sex forgotten now. This was naked ambition. Breaking 28 in the 10,000 meter is a big deal, like breaking 4 in the mile, and only about 15 runners had ever done it.

"Well, we'll study your program carefully," I said slowly.
    "That's one major reason I came here. I feel I need a good coach. I suppose I could have tried to cut it alone, training myself. I could forget about collegiate running, I guess, and just go into open. But I don't know enough yet about training to find the right way. I feel totally confused and stymied. So maybe you can figure it out."
    He was zipping up the jacket of his sweats. Then he was polishing his glasses, which had a little moisture condensed on them. For a moment those spooky, clear eyes of his met mine without the glasses in between, and I noted his thick, chestnut eyelashes.
    "I'm thinking about the Olympics," he said.
    I was dubious. Vince and Jacques were clear Olympic prospects, but I didn't want to get Billy's hopes up.
    "I want to double in the 5,000 and 10,000 in Montreal," he said.
    The 5,000 meter and the 10,000 meter are the classic long-distance runs on the track and are equivalent to nearly three and six miles.
    "That's a big order," I said. "You'll have to be breaking 28 in the 10,000 and 13:35 in the 5,000 by next fall. To win, you'd probably have to run anywhere between 27:30 and 27:35 in the 10,000, and around 13:10 or 15 in the 5,000. You haven't had any international experience, so we'd have to get you out there a time or two beforehand. That's why Steve Prefon-taine lost the 5,000 at Munich—he didn't know how tough those European babies are."
    I didn't add that Americans had won only two Olympic 5,000s and one 10,000 in history, and that only now were American distance runners becoming a serious challenge to European power in these two great events. Billy knew that.
    "I worry that maybe I'm too young for this Olympics," said Billy.
    "It isn't how young you are. It's how good you are."
    "Okay," Billy grinned, "I'll take your word for it."
    "Get your ass into the shower," I said. "I want to see all three of you at my house tonight. Seven sharp. We have team open house there every Monday and Thursday. Training films, consciousness-raising, and stuff."
    "Okay, Mr. Brown," he said.
    "No sarcasm," I barked. "And I mean that."
    He looked at me strangely. "Sure, Mr. Brown," he said in a low voice and walked off.
    That evening at seven, my house slowly filled with runners.
    I lived in what had once been the head gardener's cottage. It was a pleasant rambling stucco place, with a wisteria-covered veranda in front. It stood on the warm south side of several big spruces and pines, near the greenhouses. (The greenhouses had once housed Joe's famed orchid collection—now they sheltered a clutter of exotic botany and ecological experiments.) From my front window, I could look across the field to the track
    and the bleachers. Joe Prescott must have known what balm that little house, and that view, would be to my wounded soul.
    The runners came in tracking mud. The big living room had windowseats and windows on three sides. Now the red chintz curtains were pulled. The fire in the fieldstone fireplace