The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren Page A

ex-Oregoners whipping along the backstretch. They had thrown their brand-new Prescott sweats on the bleachers and were running bare-legged, in singlets. They were pacing each other, running shoulder to shoulder, their hair lifting. I could see they were having a good time.
    Now they rounded into the turn toward me, and I could begin to hear the gnash, gnash of their spikes. They floated along on their long legs like whippets. Now I could hear their breathing amid the crunch of spikes. Then they were flashing past me. For a moment I was able to forget about practical things like oxygen capacity of lungs and lactic acid buildup in muscles, and see them as pure myth.
    A nervous contentment suffused me, warm and unstable as the winter sunshine. The hidden beauties of my subconscious had again risen into view, on this cinder track, in this sweet sunshine.
    The three had finished their quarter-mile speed lap and were jogging to take the recovery interval and let their pulses drop. I looked at my watch. After just thirty seconds they were off again. This was typical of the high-power stuff that Lindquist had his runners do.
    That first morning, I was content just to watch and see what they did. Even their styles were different. Vince Marti hurtled along, full of raw strength. Jacques LaFont punched his way along with a kind of controlled tension. Billy was a puller, light and effortless.
    After a set of quarters, Vince and Jacques broke away to take a couple miles of gentle striding around the field. But Billy kept on alone, reeling out 60-second quarters with only a 30-second jogging rest between. I was impressed. He was really burning through them. You put together four 60's, and you have a four-minute mile.
    Sitting down beside his carelessly tossed sweats, I clocked him with my Harper Split and noted the times. He did fifteen of those quarters, pacing himself with such spooky precision that he never varied more
    than a quarter- or half-second. He paid absolutely no attention to me. To judge from the abstracted expression on his face, I don't think he knew that I was there. -
    What impressed me most was the effortlessness. His long, floating stride had an eerie, slow-motion quality. He just ghosted along. And he had a very light, soft stride—now that he was alone, I could scarcely hear his spikes stir the cinders as he went past. He had the most beautiful natural form I had ever seen—no wasted effort anywhere. He was almost unreal. He was that idea of a runner that haunts the minds of track people.
    Finally he finished. While I worked with the other boys, he did two miles at a crisp 5:15 pace to warm down. Even his warm-down was no fooling around.
    Then he came jogging over to me. He smiled a little, still abstracted, but he now looked quite tired. I said nothing, just tossed him his towel, and stood pretending to study his times noted on my clipboard.
    Up close, he was no idea. He was painfully real. He smelled of wet hair and wet cloth. The realness of him hit me like a blow. And he looked even more attractive than yesterday.
    In the daylight, his face and limbs were faintly speckled all over like a bird's egg. He had gotten too much sun on his fair skin. Just looking at his skin gave me a tender, hurting feeling. I wanted to caress it, and knew I would never do it. His glasses were what gave his handsome face its chief charm—they made him look like a sexy, young professor.
    Glancing covertly up from the clipboard as he busied himself with the towel, I noticed that on his right shoulder he had a tattoo. That surprised me. It looked like a sun sign—a woman's naked torso with a laurel wreath.
    "What's that tattoo?" I asked.
    "That's Virgo," he said. He grinned, a sensual, sunny grin, and jerked his thumb toward the other two, who were back running on the track. "They've got tattoos too. Vince is a Scorpio, and Jacques is a Cancer."
    "The three of you are good friends, aren't you?" My heart was sinking. He was probably