‘Our treadmill,’ Serafin announced. He touched a button and the rubber moved smoothly over unseen rollers. ‘Don’t look so scandalised, gentlemen. This isn’t an instrument of torture. The treadmill is standard equipment in physiological labs. It is a reliable means of regulating experiments involving forward motion. It controls the leg cadence, you see. We use it here to analyze the movement of running, and additionally as a training device.’ He turned off the power. ‘This is the part of the schedule set aside for what we call ergogenics. This afternoon you will see how it is possible to raise the quality of a training session. Goldengirl will shortly give a demonstration of the principle in action. Dr. Lee and Mr. Klugman must take all the credit for discovering its application to our program, so I shall leave the explanation to them.’
Klugman, his face set grimly for anyone about to communicate a principle, indicated that he was not the vocal side of the presentation by unzipping the top of his warm-ups to reveal a whistle on a cord nestling in the growth of black hair there. He jerked it to his lips and blew a short blast.
From a door at the end Goldengirl came running. She was wearing her gold leotard and white gym shoes; from the fluent movement of her breasts, nothing else. She stopped a yard from Klugman and stood erect, her eyes dipping a fraction to look into his. Her radiance during the press conference had given way to the expression of elegant insouciance Dryden remembered from the film.
Klugman issued instructions: ‘You are to demonstrate your ability to run at a speed of 400 metres per minute. When I tell you, step on the treadmill and keep striding for as long as you can. I shall call out twenty-second intervals, so you will know how you are doing. Okay?’
Goldengirl fractionally inclined her head.
An Accusplit electronic stopwatch with a digital display was pressed into Dryden’s hand by Serafin. Lee and Valenti were given them too.
Lee started the treadmill. Goldengirl had mounted the platform and was waiting for the order to step on the moving belt.
‘There’s a delay while we get up to the required speed,’ Klugman explained. ‘Don’t start your watches before Dr. Lee gives the word.’ He put out a finger and tapped Goldengirl’s calf. ‘Okay.’
She stepped on, and began the unproductive exercise of running without forward movement, building speed in response to the motor’s acceleration.
‘Now,’ said Lee.
They touched off the timers.
She had whipped up her stride to a little below sprinting pace, compelled by the mechanism to drive her leading leg well forward to sustain the rate.
Lee turned his back on her and began speaking. ‘This is a simple demonstration of a phenomenon first noted sixty years ago by an American physiologist named Nicholson. He used a piece of apparatus called a Mosso ergograph which is obsolete now, but he obtained results which have been borne out by investigations since.’
‘Twenty seconds,’ said Klugman.
‘In 1936, the Russian scientists Nemtsova and Shatenshteyn, working with weights and a bicycle ergometer, found clear metabolic evidence to support Nicholson’s observations, by measuring oxygen consumption, pulse rates and chronaxia.’
‘Jesus! What’s that?’ asked Valenti.
‘Chronaxia relates to the response of muscles to an electric current. The minimum amount of current that produces a measurable response in a given muscle is known as the threshold stimulus. Chronaxia is the time a current of twice this strength takes to produce a response.’
‘One minute,’ said Klugman.
‘You give the dame electric shocks?’ Valenti inquired.
Lee shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that. I was describing the Russian experiment.’
‘Trust the goddamned Reds to think of something like that,’ said Valenti. ‘Hey, she’s holding up good. Keep it going, chick. What’s the record?’
‘One minute twenty,’ called Klugman.
‘Running on a treadmill isn’t an activity for which records are kept,’ answered Lee. ‘She is moving at a speed equivalent to an eight-hundred-metre run in two minutes, which would have won each Olympic title up to 1972, but she has not trained for eight-hundred-metre running.’
‘One forty,’ called Klugman. ‘Keep going.’
Signs of stress were starting to appear in Goldengirl. Her intake of breath was stertorous and her face was pink.
‘The Russian girl Kazankina, who won the 1976 Olympic 800 metres, could probably manage something better than two minutes twenty at this tempo,’ said Lee. ‘We shan’t see anything of that caliber today.’
‘One fifty,’ interjected Klugman. ‘Can you hold on?’
Goldengirl’s feet were drumming heavily on the rubber. Her head was going back. She closed her eyes. Suddenly the stride shortened, and she was carried back. She stumbled, tottered forward and finished on her knees beside the still-moving belt.
‘One fifty-four point six,’ announced Klugman.
‘Check,’ said Valenti.
‘Check,’ said Dryden. Actually, he had omitted to press the stop button on the Accusplit.
‘So what does it prove?’ asked Valenti.
‘Nothing yet,’ said Lee.
Klugman said to Goldengirl, ‘Take a ten-minute rest.’
She moved obediently to a rubber mat and lay on her back. The sweat was breaking through her pores and her legs were trembling.
‘She has to do something else?’ said Valenti.
‘The same exercise, but with ergogenic motivation,’ answered Lee.
‘You sure it won’t louse up her chances tomorrow?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Lee. ‘If she wasn’t on the treadmill, she would be doing this on the track.’
It seemed a short ten minutes later when Klugman tersely ordered, ‘On your feet. Take up your position.’
She sprang upright and ran toward them as she had the first time, the only indication of her effort a deeper coloration at points where the leotard was moistened by sweat.
Lee gave the instruction this time. ‘You are to try again now. First, let us be clear why we are doing this. You are going for gold. I want you to repeat that: ‘I am going for gold.’
She repeated the words with a conviction that would have paralysed any rival who overheard.
‘I am going to give you a tablet that will eliminate fatigue,’ Lee went on. ‘I shall then count to five and it will begin to take effect. You will be able to stay on the treadmill until I tell you to step off. Instead of fatigue, you will have a sensation of weightlessness. You will feel your body grow lighter as the tablet is absorbed into your bloodstream. Are you ready?’
She nodded.
Lee handed her a white pill, which she swallowed. He counted to five and started the treadmill.
Dryden swiftly reset his timer to zero. Goldengirl was on the moving band of rubber again, steadily raising her stride rate.
‘Now,’ said Lee, and they started their timers.
‘This sort of thing won’t get by in Moscow,’ said Valenti with a sniff. ‘They’re going to be right down on anyone using dope.’
‘We have no intention of using this at the Olympics,’ Serafin assured him. ‘It is an aid to training, nothing more. If you eliminate fatigue, the quality of the athlete’s workout is improved, and this will obviously assist her performances on the track.’
They watched in silence except Klugman calling the intervals. With a minute gone, Goldengirl was showing no obvious strain. Valenti put his timer on a bench and lit a cigar.
At one minute forty, she was moving smoothly.
Dryden listened to the metronomic beat on the treadmill and watched the illuminated digits replacing each other on the Accusplit display. One fifty-four, her previous performance, flickered by. When two minutes registered, he glanced up at Goldengirl. Her cheeks were flushed and the muscles were flexing round her neck, but she looked capable of enduring it longer.