Hearts Racing Read Free Page B

useless Maginot Line in the 1930s had whipped the US so soundly, but the proof was in the crème brûlée .
    Buck’s phone rang. LeMond. He asked, “How’d it go?”
    Buck wondered why the man was calling instead of just waiting to ask tomorrow. He’d be seeing LeMond early for training, just like any other day. “Fine, I guess. Except for the CrossFit part.”
    “Uh huh,” LeMond said. Then there was a pause, as if LeMond was waiting for Buck to say something else and was giving him the space to say it.
    Buck thought LeMond sounded like he might be smiling, which was odd because he didn’t have anything further to say. He let the silence stretch, wondering what a smile sounded like and why he thought he heard one.
    LeMond picked the conversation up again. “I just wanted to make sure your mind is still on the bike,” he said, at last.
    “Of course,” Buck said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
    “No reason, no reason. Okay. See you tomorrow.”
    “Yep. Bon soir .”
    Buck hung up then looked at the phone quizzically a moment before putting it down. He got up, feeling stiff but good, and then he headed into the kitchen. He’d have a glass of the La Victoire then call it an early night.
    He wouldn’t admit publicly to anyone that he wanted to hit the bed early to protect himself against the dreaded DOMS, but that was exactly his plan. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness: a muscle’s brutal way of telling you it isn’t used to whatever you were making it do the day before. Buck couldn’t afford DOMS this close to the New Orleans race. He didn’t think he’d be sore after that joke of a workout today at the CrossFit gym, but any time you use muscles you don’t normally use, or use them in a new way, you were flirting with soreness.
    Now that he thought about it, he’d be better off foregoing the La Victoire for an extra liter of water before bed. It’d probably mean getting up for a middle-of-the-night pee break, but it’d be worth it to be strong on the bike. At thirty, he was still young for a human, but getting old for a cyclist. He needed to make his name before he washed out for good. Guys had stayed in the peloton well into their forties before, but not many. If he blew it as a cyclist, he’d have plenty of years for La Victoire as he drank away his regret, working at a churning machine in a dairy or shoveling shit in some no-name vineyard.
    As he settled into bed, he thought about his parents. He’d never really known his mom, but somehow her absence still left a void. There were pictures of her holding him as a child, looking at him as if he were the most precious thing on earth, but she’d passed when he was very young. His father had raised him, given him an appreciation for the beauty and passion of cycling. They watched the spring classics together, Paris-Roubaix chief among those, and the grand tours: the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta Espana, and the Tour de France. Even when the French came and forced his father out of his government job to work in the state-run dairy farms, Old Man Heart never lost his love of pro cycling. He always called it the most beautiful sport, right up until the day an accident at the dairy ended his life.
    What would his dad say about him doing stupid-ass CrossFit—about him just asking for soreness before a big race?
    “Don’t worry, Pop,” Buck thought. “I’m good to ride. And I’ll be thinking of you.”
    He woke five minutes before his alarm went off, and kicked his legs up to roll out of bed in his customary move. They burned like someone had rubbed metal filings into the muscle fibers. He reached to clutch at them, but his arms were like dead wood, and the effort of curling his body made his abdominal muscles sear with stringy, pulling fire. Oh god, no.
    Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Double, extra-fiery shit. He had it. DOMS! He was screwed.
    He managed to shuffle into the bathroom, take a leak, and then dress himself, but every movement made his muscles roar. He’d