Coach had promised a bit much. He had at first described a comfortable system where I could run normally on a treadmill and he could slowly change the gas mixture without interfering with my workout, like a big glass cabinet that in no way impinged on my daily life. It was a nice fantasy. As it turned out, when it came time to breathe Martian standard atmosphere -- at that point I had to wear a mask. A big bulky mask with a long hose.
To give him full credit, he had managed to arrange passage to Mars. This was non-trivial, given a proposal that involved nothing much more than training an e0 to perform like an e1. Everyone I knew in what they thought of as serious biology would scoff at the luxuries of these lesser so-called "bio-mechanical" sciences -- research related to, you know, sports. I did too, at first.
I perused Coach's data and observations. Even though it was about me, and about my rather goofy training program, the scholarship was quite professional and the conclusions were fairly interesting. I was a case study -- what my own field would have been mockingly called an anecdote. It turns out in the field of human performance case studies are the way a lot of pioneering research is done. It's hard to test implausible theories on large groups because controlled experiments on humans are difficult, and doing something especially arduous cannot be implemented on a large sample size. But a single case study can be like gold, especially if it shows exceptional results.
It was clear that Coach had high hopes for me. Thinking about that was what kept me going during the months I ran in place with the elephant trunk stapled to my face. And that was the easy part.
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