Holmenkollen Mountain
Author © Scott D. Zachary

       The Air Force Fitness Test required us to run one and a half miles within a specified time based on our age. It was 1986, I was 29, and my time limit was thirteen and a half minutes. I had always set a more vigorous goal for myself than the Air Force requirement. This year, I was shooting for nine and a half minutes or six minutes and twenty seconds per mile. I trained for six weeks and barely missed my goal with a time of 9:37. Not bad for the heavy smoker that I was.

       While catching my breath after the fitness run, Tech Sergeant Wayne Patterson asked me if I would participate in the Headquarters AFNorth Sports Day Competition. This tournament pits the NATO nations against each other in track and field events. I agreed to run in the 200-meter and 400-meter races. I ramped up my training for several more weeks at the Sports Complex on Kolsås NATO base.

       There was no chance of my taking first or second place in these races. Two Norwegian captains were running, and they were Olympic-class sprinters, both able to run nearly four-minute miles. I did have my sights set on the bronze medals, though. I won the bronze in the 200-meter race. But, just before crossing the finish line in the 400-meter race, I turned my head to see how close my Danish competitor was. That mistake allowed him to cross the finish line a split-second ahead of me.

       Sitting in the bleachers afterward, Senior Master Sergeant Dean Cooper asked, “Captain, have you ever run long distance?”

       “What do you mean by ‘long distance,’ Dean?”

       “Ten or twelve miles.”

       “The farthest I’ve run is five kilometers.”

       “Want to go for a long run next Saturday?”

       “I might be good for six or seven miles, but no more than that.”

       Dean and I lived in the little town of Jar (pronounced “Yar”), so we met at the trikken (tram) station the following Saturday morning. We jogged a couple of miles down the mountainside along Vollsveien to the Oslo Fjord and continued running on a broad sidewalk along Drammensveien toward Oslo.

       “Hey, Dean, we need to turn around! If I make it back up to Jar, we will have run at least eight miles.”

       “We’ll be at the beach in another mile, and you know what we’re going to see there.”

       All of the Norwegian women sunbathe topless, so I croaked, “What’s another mile?” It felt more like two miles, and there were zero women at the beach. Humph!

       Reality struck me. “What the hell are you doing to me, Dean? I know we’ve run at least six miles, and that means we have another six to get home with the last two up the side of a mountain.”

       “I guess we should get moving then, huh?”

       I scowled.

       Nine miles into our run, my inner thighs had become so chafed that they had begun to bleed. Dean loaned me his silk jacket, and I tied it around one thigh to reduce the friction. Still, running back up the mountainside to Jar was the most grueling thing I’d ever done; every stride was excruciating.

       “You can do it, Cap’n. You can do it,” Dean coached over and over.

       “One more!” I grunted with each lurch forward. “One more! One more!”

       I stopped running at the trikken station. Dean congratulated me and headed home. I was so glad to walk. I thought about cheering, but that required more energy than I had left. I hobbled down my driveway, grappled the railing, and pulled myself up the stairs onto the patio.

       Everything was easy after that—relatively speaking. Dean and I began running long distances together every Saturday and sometimes on Sunday, too. Weekdays, I ran three or four shorter runs. My favorite run was a twelve-miler that took us through Frogner Park in Oslo, Norway’s most popular tourist attraction. It features the world’s largest sculpture park created by a single artist, Gustav Vigeland. The bronze and granite statues portray people engaging in various activities: running, wrestling, arguing, hugging, contemplating, fretting, playing, laughing, holding hands, and of course, dancing in the rain. The artist sculpted the figures without clothes to make his creations timeless.

       On our run in mid-August, Dean led the way to the foot of Holmenkollen Mountain. “Look up, Cap’n.”

       Stretching my neck upward, I visually consumed the hairpin turns of Holmenkollveien.

       Dean continued, “Ever since I saw the Holmenkollen Ski Jump at the top of this monster, I’ve wanted to run to it. Seeing the lighted ski jump from everywhere in Oslo keeps spurring me to run up there and look down. It taunts me in my dreams.”

       “Wow.”

       “Want to join me in my dream and train with me?”

       “That can’t be any more difficult than what I endured with you in our first big run.”

       “Is that a ‘yes’?”

       “I like your dream—yes!”

       “How’s Saturday, the fourth of October sound? That’ll give us seven weeks to prepare.”

       “You set the pace—I’ll follow.”

       Dean’s dream plotted our run to the top of Holmenkollen Mountain in the middle of a half marathon. We trained by blasting to the top of every hill we could find while running all the highways and trails around Oslo. Thanks to Dean, I fell in love with running long distance.

       One week before the big day, Dean called me. “I can’t get out of bed. My back gave out.”

       “Is there any chance you might recover by next Saturday?”

       “It doesn’t look good.”

       “Get some rest. I’m going ahead with the dry run to the foot of the Mountain today.”

       “Don’t let me hold you back, Cap’n. You’re ready. You don’t need me—you can do it.”   

       As we had planned, I ran the dry run to the base of Holmenkollen Mountain. I looked up at that steep mountainside while running in place. It didn’t intimidate me in the least. I was ready. I leaned forward, nearly tackled it, and then remembered that this is Dean’s sparkle. I’ll hold off for another week and give Dean time to recover, a chance to fulfill his dream. We trained for this together, and if possible, we’ll achieve it together.

       I did a little mental training Sunday on the track at the NATO Sports Complex. Forty-eight laps on a quarter-mile track—that’s hurts the mind! I kept losing track of the number of laps I had completed. Was that 24 or 25? Oh well, 24 it is. Was that 38 or 39? Damn, 38! What a crock!

       Dean told me during the week that if he didn’t meet me at the Jar Trikken station on Saturday morning at ten o’clock, I should run the Mountain without him. On the minute, Dean came jogging down the hill, grinning.

       “You good?” I hollered.

       “Never better! You ready to run up a mountain, Cap’n?”

       “I was bouncing off the gate last Saturday. I did our dry run and almost followed through, but I had to take a shot at seeing you fulfill your dream.”

       “Jody threatened to leave me if I become a cripple today.”

       “Well, don’t become a cripple, then!”

       The five-plus miles to the base seemed to go by in an instant. Hard as we had trained, running up Holmenkollen Mountain was excruciating. The little footpaths shortcutting the switchback turns were oh-so-tempting. The switchbacks themselves were incredible. They were so steep that if you were to stand on them perpendicular to the road, you’d fall backward.

       I went into a trance. As far as I was concerned, it was just me and that mountain. It took everything I had in me to keep going. Two miles—up and up. Tourists were casually strolling along the wide sidewalk from the Holmenkollen Restaurant to the ski jump and back. Today, the center of that walkway was mine. People reflexively dispersed to the edge of the path to avoid being trampled by me and to dodge the spittle that slung from my mouth as I huffed and puffed.

       At the summit, I leaped onto the bronze statue of King Olav V’s dog.

       “Don’t stop, Cap’n!”

       “Had to fulfill my vision,” as I jumped off of the King’s dog.

       Jogging in place for a few moments to catch our breath, we admired the view of the Oslo Fjord and then loped down the mountainside. The roadway was so steep that we had to throttle back to keep from pulverizing our knees and ankles. Back down on the relatively flat Ankerveien, some eleven miles into our run, Dean asked, “What do you say when we get back to Jar, we keep right on going out to Kolsås, and then back to Jar? That will give us a full marathon.”

       “Give me a couple of minutes to think about it.”

       “Okay.”

       A little way down the road, I responded to Dean’s challenge. “I have no doubt we’re fit enough to do it, Dean. If we had pretty girls giving us cups of orange juice and pouring cold water over our heads along the way as they do in those official marathons, I’d say, ‘Let’s do it!’ But, since there’s hardly any place to get water along the way, I’m going to run straight home instead and drink that cold case of beer that’s waiting for me in my refrigerator.”

       Dean and I high-fived as we peeled off in Jar.

       Shortly after our big run, Dean moved on to a new assignment. I continued running long distance alone. I was so addicted to the endorphin highs that I ran ten miles through eighteen inches of fresh snow that December.

       My half-brother, Steve, came to visit in January from Egypt where he worked as a contractor performing maintenance on F-16 fighter jets. Steve was still sleeping when I bundled up and went out for a thirteen-mile run to Kolsås NATO base and back. The thermometer on the corner of the house read 3°F. Steve stared at me when I came in the door after my run. Incredulous, he reached out and plucked the two-inch icicles from my earlobes.

       I love making people gawk.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       Twenty-four years later, I ran my first official half marathon. I’m looking forward to reliving that sweet story with you where a delightful young woman with muscular dystrophy nearly missed the chance to fulfill her dream as I exited Churchill Downs.