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You weren’t supposed to see many stars at sea level, particularly along this coast, because of the moisture in the air. This maxim had obviously been determined by people with no experience of being on the beach with no high cloud or fog layers.
Not that she would tell others about it. At times like this, it seemed as if the beach, the fog, and the stars belonged to her alone.
She continued on. She’d jogged the beach enough to know her position within a hundred yards, based on her speed and the landmarks. She passed one of them, a higher dune topped by a single cypress with branches swept inland by constant onshore winds. A huge old redwood stump had floated to sea from a logging camp along a river. Decades ago, loggers had cut all the trees and let erosion expose the trunk of the old giant. When it finally slid into a river, probably in northern California where redwoods grew, it floated at sea until it washed ashore near Pacific City, even though prevailing currents should have taken it south. Farther down the beach, a rock ridge ran from the high tide mark out into the ocean.
She detoured off the hard sand and around the inland point of the ridge, then back onto the sand. She reached a section where the broad, gently sloping beach turned steeper and narrower for fifty yards. Farther along, a tree-covered hill came down to the edge of the intertidal zone before the beach broadened to a flat expanse almost two hundred yards wide at low tide. Finally, the foliage on top of the bordering dunes dwindled to scattered grass, indicating that Greta had neared the end of the spit at the mouth of the Nestucca River.
She stopped, her breathing heavy. She felt good with ocean and river on three sides and the sandy beach behind her. At that moment, she felt as if she had reached some level of attainment that needed no audience.
She stood there for fifteen minutes until she felt the beginning of a chill that cooled her sweat.
She remembered that she did, indeed, have to head back. Although sometimes when she came this far, she would walk back, today she started off jogging again. By now, the lightening sky hid the stars, and only wispy tendrils remained of the ethereal low fog. She jogged until she came to within one mile of home, then walked to cool down before getting there so she could go right into a shower. Walking also let her hold onto the experience a little longer.
Inside the house, she wasn’t yet ready to re-enter her daily world. She felt energetic, despite jogging seven miles and walking one mile. She headed to the community center, let herself in by punching the combination, and went to the exercise room. A wall clock read a quarter after seven, a time when she usually didn’t have to compete for the machines. She also preferred the early hour so she wouldn’t feel self-conscious about other people wondering at this large woman using weights. It never occurred to her that few ever had such thoughts.
Sandra something-or-another was already using the weight room and working up a good sweat. Short, blonde, and very overweight, Sandra lived three blocks from Greta. They saw each other at the weight room about once a month. As women do, they each knew the basics of the other’s life by the end of the first session. Sandra was forty-one, divorced, and the mother of two, a fourteen-year-old daughter and a ten-year-old son. Greta knew the daughter from Cloverdale High School, a cheerleader. Sandra hated the coast, the fog, the rain, and the isolation but said she was trapped because her ex had regular visitation rights and refused to give permission for her to move the children. Although Greta sympathized, she would just as soon not have heard about Sandra’s same problems every time they shared the weights. Thankfully, Sandra finished soon after Greta arrived, so she missed out on the latest reiterations.
Today, Greta chose a routine of moderate weights with high repetitions, supposedly best for toning and general condition, though not for strength. She usually minimized exercises with higher weights and fewer repetitions, which built muscle mass. She was already too aware of her size and avoided getting bigger.
The obvious problem with this approach was that it prevented her from achieving mastery of her best natural gift, one that had manifested in her junior year in high school.
***
She was already the best player in her high school girls basketball league, all-conference as a junior and a candidate for the conference’s most valuable player award. Late in the season, the team practiced hard every day in preparation for the Missouri State basketball tournament. The coach had been unhappy with Greta’s effort that day. After practice, he sent her to run laps on the track around the football field. Both the girls and the boys track teams worked out there in early practices for the coming track season.
As Greta passed a mixed group of boys and girls near a circular piece of pavement, one girl hailed her. Greta had known this stout, not quite fat, girl most of her life; she lived four houses away from Greta’s family. After stopping and chatting, Greta casually inquired about the girl’s event, the shot put. The girl asked whether Greta wanted to give it a try. Greta picked up the eight-pound iron ball, listened to a minute of basic instructions, along with a few amused comments from the boy putters, and proceeded to put the shot only inches behind the school record. After shocked silence, comments such as “Holy shit, did you see that!” combined with awestruck expressions from the boys and an angry glare from her neighbor.
Within moments, the girls’ track coach appeared and pressured Greta to throw again, though she mainly wanted to go back to jogging and avoid the attention.
Her second throw beat the school record by two feet. The coach walked her through the proper procedure, and the third throw extended the new record by five feet. Within twenty minutes of stopping to chat with the group, she was a member of the girls track team as a shot putter. Within two days, she was also the team’s leading discus, hammer, and javelin thrower.
To her surprise, she liked track better than basketball. As a solo sport, she didn’t have to work with teammates. In addition, hardly anyone came to the track meets, in contrast to the full houses for basketball. Once the basketball games started, she forgot about the crowds staring at her, but until then, she felt like her hated elementary school nickname, with her flailing legs and arms. In track, it was only her and a few other athletes, coaches, and officials.
Her high school basketball team made it through two rounds of playoffs before losing to a St. Louis Catholic school. That school had two advantages: an enrollment six times that of Greta’s high school, and it recruited in a manner worthy of a top-five men’s college team. Greta’s team lost 69 to 62, to everyone’s surprise. Illegal betting had estimated a 30-point loss. Gamblers lost obscene amounts of money, due to the effort of Greta’s team and in no small part to her performance. She never knew of her contribution to the bookies’ heartburn.
Freed from the basketball season, she switched full time to track. It was obvious to the coach that the shot put was not her main event. She was still the best on the team, even though her long arms and frame were not optimal for an event slanted toward short, strong arms and explosions of energy. Her best events took advantage of her height and long arms. For the discus and the hammer throw, the technique involved spinning with the discus or the hammer and then releasing downfield. The greater the radius of rotation the thrower could achieve translated directly into longer throws. For Greta, at six feet three inches, quick and strong, it meant she dominated those two events.
Although javelin was not quite as optimal for her physique, her physical attributes led to more school records and conference titles.
When it came time to consider offers for college athletic scholarships, track ended up being a deciding factor. Several major universities made offers for basketball. When she inquired whether she could also do track, most said no. One of the few to offer a scholarship for both sports was Missouri State. That, along with the proximity and her nervousness about leaving home and hearth, settled the decision. She chose Missouri State University, only fifteen miles away.
At the collegiate level, her size and natural agility were not enough for her to dominate when she encountered her first serious field competition. The first thing the university track coach did was cut back her events. She would not be competitive at the national-level in the shotput and javelin, but a conundrum was considering the discus and hammer. Common wisdom was to focus on a single event, but Greta was so strong in both events that the coach, with Greta’s urging, acceded to her doing both.
For all four years at Missouri State, she and the track and field coach had a fondness/exasperation relationship. By her sophomore year, Greta regularly took first place at conference meets in both discus and hammer. By her junior year, she was rated among the top ten (lower half) in the country in both events. The problem was that she couldn’t commit to the rigorous training regime desired by the coach because she was reticent to get physically bigger. To push into the top nationally, she needed to be stronger with more arm, shoulder, and chest musculature. This meant serious time in weight rooms. She already weighed 190 pounds, and this represented a commitment she wasn’t ready to make until her senior year.
After an All-Conference meet, where she took first in both discus and hammer, the team’s coach called her into his office. He said that he had been contacted by the U.S. Olympic Committee to inquire about her potential for the next Olympics coming up in fifteen months. It was a routine inquiry to all the top ten or so athletes in each track and field event.
“Greta, I told them I thought you had the potential to be a top three in either hammer or discus, but I had to be honest and say I didn’t know whether you were willing to do what it takes to get there.”
The inquiry from the USOC shocked her. Although Coach Villars had periodically badgered her about training, he had never voiced the depth of his belief in her potential. Her thoughts morphed into an image of herself standing on the top platform at the Olympics, wearing the gold medal hanging around her
neck, with the “Star Spangled Banner” playing. Then her triumphal trot around the track, waving an American flag to the cheers of tens of thousands.
“Would you be willing to make such a commitment?”
On the spot, she said she would. Once she stated this, it became a matter of principle to make the effort, and the vision never left her mind.
Thus, her senior year at Missouri State focused on training, which meant the weight room and intense stretching exercises to keep the new muscle mass loose. The basketball coach was not pleased. Greta heard third hand about acrimonious exchanges between the coaches. She already had most of the courses she needed for graduation, so she took a light load her senior year. She gained twenty pounds of muscle, half of which she put on by basketball season. The added weight might have slowed her, but speed was never her game. The added strength came in handy. She led the league in rebounds and was named to the league’s All-Defensive Team. Conference sports writers frequently commented on her aggressive play around the basket and how opposing players felt bruised the week after playing against her.
