Ann had fierceness and confidence to burn. Now she was deep-sixing discretion and letting fearplay its part. Ultrarunning was about to see its first Queen’s Gambit.
Chapter 14
SHE’S INSANE! She’s … awesome.
Coach Vigil was a hard-data freak, but as he watched Ann plunge into the Rockies with her ballsydo-or-die game plan, he loved the fact that ultrarunning had no science, no playbook, no trainingmanual, no conventional wisdom. That kind of freewheeling self-invention is where bigbreakthroughs come from, as Vigil knew (and Columbus, the Beatles, and Bill Gates wouldhappily agree). Ann Trason and her compadres were like mad scientists messing with beakers inthe basement lab, ignored by the rest of the sport and free to defy every known principle offootwear, food, biomechanics, training intensity … everything.
And whatever breakthroughs they came up with, they’d be legit. With ultrarunners, Vigil had therefreshing peace of mind of dealing with pure lab specimens. He wasn’t being hoodwinked by aphony superperformance, like the “miraculous” endurance of Tour de France cyclists, or thegargantuan power of suddenly melon-headed home-run hitters, or the blazing speed of femalesprinters who win five medals in one Olympics before going to jail for lying to the feds aboutsteroids. “Even the brightest smile,” one observer would say of disgraced wondergirl MarionJones a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind “can hide a lie.”
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