The Front Runner

lactic-acid accumulation in his muscles would complicate the magnesium deficiency. At any rate, I found that dosing him with Magnesium Plus didn't solve the cramp problem. As for the fractures, his bones were simply giving away under the overload.
    So I tried to get him to drop his mileage and concentrate on speed and strength training. Runners like Puttemans have done beautifully on little more than 100 miles a week. But Billy wouldn't listen. He fretted and moaned, "I'm sure I'm not working hard enough." So in January, to his great surprise, he found himself going sour, getting the flu and another stress fracture in his right shin. He had to wear a leg cast for a month, and nearly went crazy from the inactivity.
    I was furious, and really laid into him. "You want to go to Montreal," I said. "You won't even live that long."
    The experience shook him. But his deep-seated reasons for battling me were still there. He would sneak out for clandestine extra workouts like a ten-year-old sneaking a cigarette behind the barn in the old days.
    Another battle was over diet. I lost this one.
    I am a firm believer in lean, red meat. So when I found out that Billy was a vegetarian, I got very upset. He said he was a Buddhist, and that he couldn't eat any creature that had been killed.
    I got very uptight about this. I'd already seen several of my runners get malnutrition on fad macrobiotic diets. But Billy explained patiently that, no, he wasn't into macrobiotics. He was killing two birds with one stone by adopting a bizarre vegetarian diet used successfully in recent years by some European distance runners. He lived on sour milk, yogurt, fruit and raw
    vegetables, whole-grained cereals, nuts and potatoes. He fixed these meals himself in the dorm kitchenette, and he was—as far as boiling potatoes went—a fair cook.
    My upset finally slacked off when I had the science department analyze what he ate. They soberly reported that it contained the amounts of high-quality protein, carbohydrate, potassium, etc. that I judged vital for his work load. And, since there was no budging him on this religious issue, I let him alone. I can't say exactly how much the diet contributed to his later success. But it did help keep him at about 5 percent body fat, so it contributed to his speed. There is a thing in running called the power-weight ratio, and most runners find that the less fat they carry, the better they perform. Bone and fat are dead weight in running. Light-boned, fatless, Billy had almost the ideal physique for distance running.
    Luckily, Billy's religion forbade alcohol. So at least I didn't have that to worry about.
    Away from the track, Billy had a curious aimless-ness.
    He was supposedly studying political science. The three boys had lost their first senior semester's credits at Oregon, but they had agreed to undertake an intensive single-project portfolio at Prescott. If they completed it to the faculty's satisfaction, they could graduate on schedule. Billy chose a grandiose subject: an assessment of the effects of civil-rights legislation in American life. But he worked on it in fits and starts— except when he had the leg cast on, during which time he studied furiously. When his school records came to me, I saw his teachers remarking all the way back through junior high: "A bright student, but doesn't apply himself."
    He was, as I've said, involved with Buddhism, and also with yoga. In this he was no different from many students. But he had his own peculiar approach to it. Billy was no mystic, either about running or about life. He was coldly practical. He simply tried to live the basic Buddhist ideals of peace, control and compassion for other beings, and was not interested in the higher levels of spiritual enlightenment
    Since I knew almost nothing about Buddhism, I had no way of knowing how thorough or authentic a Buddhist he was. But one thing was sure: he learned from transcendental meditation an extra measure of concentration, relaxation and control that he quite deliberately fed back into his running. He could study (when he chose to study) in a room where six other students were arguing radical politics at the top of their lungs. When people harassed him, he simply tuned them out.
    Before a workout or a race, he retreated inward, into the alpha state of TM, and he didn't come out till he was in the shower. While running, he was plainly in a TM trance, thinking only of his body movements, rhythm, breathing, pace. He