Fast Girl by Suzy Favor Hamilton Page B

were overjoyed. I loved being pregnant and couldn’t wait to be a mother. Mark and I were living in Blanchardville then, a small town thirty minutes outside of Madison. Our house was timber framed and cozy, nestled in a grove of grand oaks and maples on sixty-plus acres of woodland that included a creek and a running trail Mark had made for me. I continued to run through the woods daily during my pregnancy, but I was glad to be focused on picking baby names and getting our daughter’s room ready. I had yet to officially announce I was retiring, but as soon as I announced I was pregnant, people in the running world and my own family assumed I would retire, or at least take a break, in order to become a mom. My parents were overjoyed to be grandparents again, and their focus onmy running was soon transferred to their excitement about their new granddaughter.
    I pretty much knew it was time to put my dream on the shelf. Many athletes have a hard time retiring, because without the daily routine of training to give their life structure, and the positive reinforcement of winning to make them feel like they have value, they become depressed, or worse. This was not the case for me. I had hated competing for decades, since high school really, and had been looking forward to retiring for years. My demons had taken me down in Sydney. Any joy I had ever experienced in competition, and there hadn’t been much, was gone, never to return. I didn’t want to be a runner anymore. I still ran every day, but not with the need to complete the same number of miles, or with the same intensity, day after day. It was a huge relief. I loved lacing up my sneakers to go for a mellow ten-mile run. I was thrilled to have a break from the exhausting nonstop cycle of training and traveling, and then training some more. It was time to do something else.
    Mark and I had begun to make a tentative plan that he would practice law, and once I was ready to return to work, I would coach, do motivational speaking, and make appearances, or some combination of the three. Life in Wisconsin was less expensive, and we had no reason to worry about supporting ourselves. The transition seemed likely to be an easy one. I did have to make one difficult trip that year when I visited Mary at her new house in Boston. I had seen her several times since she’d been diagnosed with cancer, and she’d filled me with hope with her resolve to get well. This time, thingswere different, though. I knew it as soon as she came to the door to welcome me on the first day of my visit. Mary had lost a lot of weight, as well as her thick brown hair, from the chemo, and she looked extremely frail. When I hugged her, I was alarmed to feel her bones through her skin. But then we pulled back and looked at each other, and she flashed her great crooked grin, and it was just like old times again.
    I stayed with Mary for several days, and during that time, she insisted on taking a walk with me every day, even though she had to go slowly. This was such a change from our freshman year, when we ran so fast on the track that our teammates complained. Mary was still so young, only thirty-seven years old, and I wanted to believe in her. As we walked, our pace began to match, our arms swinging lightly by our sides, and our hands found each other, the fingers linking.
    â€œHow’s Mark?” she asked.
    â€œHe’s so excited to be a dad,” I said. “And I know he’s going to be great.”
    â€œMark was born ready to be a dad,” she joked.
    That was Mary, always making me laugh.
    â€œHe’s definitely always been a lot more mature than me,” I said. “You know, I still feel really bad that I wasn’t able to make it to your wedding. It would have meant so much to me to be there.”
    â€œYou were racing,” Mary said. “If anyone should get that, it’s me. I wish you could have been there, too, though. It was the happiest day of