Free Blood by Lawrence Hill Page B

Olympic glory. Kipchoge Keino, the Kenyan superstar whose strength was said to derive partly from drinking cow’s blood, had won the gold medal in the 1,500-metre race and the 3,000-metre steeplechase at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. I thought about Keino and renewed my private vow to achieve my goal. I trained through sore shins and blood-filled toenails, and although I was getting faster as I aged, my competitors were progressing much more quickly. At fifteen, I was no closer to winning any significant races than I had been at the age of twelve. When I went for Sunday training runs on hilly country roads in southern Ontario with the other teenagers in my track club, I would soon be left far behind the others to ward off unleashed country dogs alone. What must have been patently obvious to my coach, friends, and parents, but which took time to dawn on me, was that I did not own the body of a person destined to be, or capable of becoming, a great or even a good athlete.
    Finally, when I was sixteen or so, my track coach — David Steen, a Toronto Star reporter who had twice won the gold medal in the shot put at the Commonwealth Games — suggested that I take an “oxygen uptake” test to determine how effectively my blood transferred oxygen to my muscles. It was an unpleasant stress test, carried out on a stationary bicycle at the Fitness Centre in Toronto. While pedalling to exhaustion, I had electrodes taped to my chest and a mask locked over my mouth. By measuring the air that I expelled, the test would reveal how well I processed oxygen. I was a skinny, ultra-fit teenager who was logging about seventy kilometres a week in training runs, but the test did not reveal the athletic profile of a runner.
    In writing this book, I asked Steen about his memory of this test. He said he thought it indicated that I had 75 percent of what would be considered normal cardiorespiratory capacity. I remember words a tad more blunt. I recall him saying, in a playful but concerned way, that the test suggested that I had the lung capacity of a forty-year-old smoker. Our memories coincide on one detail: the results were so pathetic that Steen, whom I loved and admired, encouraged me to give up running and specialize in English literature.
    The suggestion wounded me, although I now know that it blended love with insight. At the time, I understood that I would have to change the way I approached running. I would still train and compete. But I would no longer dream. I discovered that it was an absolute, utter lie to say that any person can accomplish any goal if only they set their mind to it. I had run into the limits of my own blood. It could carry and deliver oxygen only so well. Well enough for me to develop decent calf muscles and to finish Miles for Millions hours ahead of legions of walkers. But not well enough to beat any serious runner on the track. I learned to focus, instead, on the pleasure and calm that came from pushing myself physically. I would make my heart pump for its own sake. For the joy of exercise, and for the sense of accomplishment. I did not have the body of a champion runner, and no amount of training would enhance my lungs, heart, and blood enough to get me there. I had to honour myself by understanding my own blood better and adjusting to my limitations.
    In this chapter, I will explore two means by which we associate blood with notions of truth and honour. The first concerns what we do with our blood. How do we go about removing it from human bodies, and once it is out, what do we use it for? This initial section of the chapter will explore how we offer blood to the gods, slay our oppressors, depict heroic violence in art, and sometimes fail as artists by neglecting to pay enough respect to blood. This first part will also examine three issues that are both social and medical: stem cell research, the tainted blood scandals erupting in many countries in the 1980s, and blood donation policies. Each of these issues