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of a five-hundred-yard freestyle and the guy in the next lane has been on your shoulder all the way, you’ll know how deep your well is.”
    And slowly the kaleidoscope began to turn.
    We started with four trips around the deck—a hundred yards per lap—of bearwalk: hands and feet. The pool is an old gray 25-by-25-yard Army Surplus hole in the ground with a rough, spackled deck to prevent slipping. The roughness shredded our hands during the first couple of laps. They won’t begin to heal before Friday. Any time Max thought one of us was dogging it in any way, we all stopped the bearwalk on the spot and racked off ten pushups, Max right there with the bullhorn: “What’s the matter, Stotan? Quitting so soon?” It’s hard to tell which is worse, the stabbing pain in your hands, the ache in your shoulders or Max’s taunting in your ear.
    From that we went right to the deck drills—jumping in place, pushups, situps, chins on the high-board frame, dips on the low-board frame, switching from one to the other on the whistle, no rest.
    â€œNo time for a shower,” Max said through the bullhorn, “but I can’t allow your sweaty, slimy bodies in my clean pool,” so we stood at attention, turning quarter-turns on the command “Turn, Stotan!” while he hosedus down with the fire hose. “Warm up with an easy four-hundred butterfly,” Max said, “and we’ll get this show on the road.”
    There is no such thing as an easy 400-yard butterfly. There’s an easy 400-yard freestyle, or breaststroke, or backstroke, but anything over 100 yards of ’fly, at any speed, deserves Dante’s serious consideration.
    â€œYou’ll notice I have one lane roped off,” Max said as we finished the ’fly. “For lack of creativity on my part, I’m calling it the Torture Lane. At any point I feel the workout is falling apart or certain of you aren’t putting out, we’ll go to the Torture Lane. Once there, you will dive in, sprint twenty-five yards, get out and rack off ten pushups, dive back in and repeat—until I stop you. The better job you do during the workout, the fewer times we’ll use it.” He smiled. “Right now I’d like to see if it works. Line up!”
    We lined up single file in front of the Torture Lane and Max blew the whistle, starting us at three-second intervals. We sprinted down one side in single file, got out and racked off the ten, then sprinted back on the other side. Ten push-ups isn’t many, but after ten or fifteen full cycles it’s all you can do to get out of the water, much less push your body up off the concrete. But Max was there with the bullhorn to help andsomehow we got through it.
    Then we lined up across the deck for the regular workout, beginning with thirty 100-yard sprints with time standards, starting every minute and forty-five seconds. For the rest of the day we did sets of 200s, steamrollers (one hard, one easy; two hard, one easy; three hard, one easy; up to ten and back), sprints, two trips to the Torture Lane, then wrapped it up with four more laps bearwalk.
    In the shower at a minute past noon we lay on the floor with all the nozzles turned on hot, oblivious to the plethora of fungi occupying that very same space.
    â€œThere was a time there, right before eleven, and then about ten to noon, when we started to fly,” Lion said.
    Nortie looked over at him like he was crazy. Jeff cranked up a big middle finger. I closed my eyes.
    Actually, Lion was right. There were a couple of times when it was so tough it just didn’t matter, but most of the time I was aware of trying to save a fraction of myself for the next set. According to Lion, you have to get that out of your head or you’ll never fly. Christ! If the good Lord wanted us to fly, he’d have given us hang gliders.
    Somehow we pulled ourselves together and made itout through the snow to