Already I knew that in two out of three categories, Maffetone was scoring high. I’d lost eleven pounds in those two weeks, trimming me back to the same weight I’d been as a college rower nearly thirty years ago. I felt more like that teenage athlete again, too; not just skinnier but springier, more revved and rested. One afternoon I was about to head out for a run and suddenly remembered I’d done an hourlong Erwan-style workout that morning. I’d recovered so thoroughly, I felt fresh enough already to do it all over again. So I did. Even more surprising was the change that came over food: good old standbys like pizza, cheesesteaks, and doughnuts now seemed untempting and kind of gross. Soon I’d be allowed to ease them back into my meals, but it was hard to imagine why I’d want to.
The final exam, though, was out there on the Hill, the same place that made me woozy the first day and kept my heart-rate monitor beeping the next five. Since then, I’d stayed away. It was too aggravating. Even when I thought I’d adapted enough to glide to the top, the alarm always buzzkilled me down to a walk before I made it halfway. On this last day, though, I hit it just right. I warmed up on the approach and then backed off, easing into the climb. When I sensed I was passing the spot where I’d maxed out the first day, I didn’t even turn my head to check. I kept eyes straight and everything else loose, trying to roll up and over this thing with my pulse slow-thumping in the fat-burning zone. Over and over in my mind, I looped the words of a wise old friend: “First focus on easy,” Micah True used to say. “Because if that’s all you get, that ain’t so bad.”
Halfway came and went without a beep, and I knew I had it. Why not? If Milo could work his way up to a thousand-pound bull, I should be able to handle a half-mile hill. The top was just steps away. I just had to remember to—
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Breathe. Breathe, you idiot! So close, and I blew it by getting anxious and holding my breath. Still, if I could get that far on just fourteen days of adapting to fat-as-fuel, there was no telling how far I could get after a few months. Probably up and over the tallest mountain on Crete.
CHAPTER 35
If you really attack a fire, you put it out. But if you attack it cautiously and fearfully, you get burned.
—GREEK PHILOSOPHER DIO CHRYSOSTOM,
the “Golden-Tongued”
I WASN’T counting on snow, though.
It was early May, the same time of year that Paddy was on the run, when Chris White and I began tracking his escape route. Springtime on Crete is like high summer anywhere else, so we’d spent the first few days sweating under a blazing sun. It was so hot as we crossed the Lasithi range that when we stumbled across a natural spring trickling into a stone sheep trough, we tore off our clothes and plunged in for a naked soak. For the rest of the day, we kept one eye on the trail and the other scanning for more heaven-sent plunge pools.
Mount Ida was a different story. At daybreak, we stood at its base and realized that high overhead, the gorge leading to the peak was still choked with snow. There was no getting around it: the only way Chris and I could cross the mountain would be to drop into that gully and hope the snowpack was solid enough to hold our weight as we crunched our way up to the top. If we were going to try, we had to go now; the higher the sun rose, the deeper we’d sink if we crashed through the crust.
“How high are we looking?” I asked Chris.
“High,” he said. “Nearly three thousand meters.” Chris glanced over his shoulder at the sun cresting the peaks behind us. We were starting at nearly sea level, so we had a long vertical ascent ahead before sunset. “Shall we?”
We shouldered our packs and began climbing, sidestepping through a long wash of crumbly scree as we traversed in an uphill diagonal toward the gorge. We were still on stone when the pitch suddenly veered upward, steepening so aggressively that I had to press my chest into the rock and climb with my hands to keep my pack from pulling me over backwards. The footing was so thin and crumbly, it was a relief two hours later to finally reach that long finger of snow-pack. We dropped into the gorge and were delighted—It’s frozen! Easy walking!—until we crashed through and sank up to our hips.
The only way out was belly first. We clawed with our hands until we pulled ourselves far enough out to free our legs a little. Then, lying flat on the snow, we kicked and swam until we got ourselves back out and up on our feet—only to drop back in a few steps later. We foundered along, mastodons in a tar pit, until we hit a steep stretch frozen into a glassy sheet. This was even trickier; if we lost our footing, we’d slide backwards and rocket all the way down the slope until we crashed to a stop on the rocks. I was glad to have a few months of Erwan training under my belt to fall back on, but as usual, Chris knew what to do instinctively. He dropped to all fours and I copied him, kicking in with my toes and gripping as best I could with my hands as we inched along.
“Now,” Chris panted. “Try this in the dark.”
When Paddy and Billy eyed Mount Ida from the mouth of their cave, the sun worried them more than the snow. There was no way they could get the general across the mountain in a single night, which meant that no matter what time they started, at some point dawn would break and they’d be stuck out there in full daylight. The worst place was high above tree line—“the shaved scalp,” as Billy called it—where they’d have nowhere to hide from planes and nowhere to run from pursuers.
So they dashed for it. After a recon plane passed in midafternoon, Paddy and his band slipped out of the cave and went on the move. They’d attack the lower slope immediately, then duck for cover before the planes circled back at dusk. They’d wait for the high roar of the engines to fade away, then set off again, crossing the snow in the dark before making the last hard push off the mountain before dawn. It was a gamble, especially because the general would be on his own two feet.
“The steepness and irregularity of the track were too much for the mule,” Paddy observed. “Back it had to go and the General, to his despair and ours, had to continue on foot up a slippery and collapsing staircase of loose boulders and shale and scree.” But if they’d timed it right, it was their best chance to stay alive.
Waiting for Paddy at the foot of the mountain were the Five Georges: five shepherds, all named George, who’d been sent by the local rebel leader as guides and bodyguards. The Georges quickly fanned out, some taking point while others trailed behind to keep an eye on the prisoner. They led Paddy’s band along spidery goat paths, zigzagging them up the steep stone until, just before dark, they reached snow line. “The last stunted mountain cedar vanished, leaving us in a stricken world where nothing grew and a freezing wind threatened to blow us off our feet. Then deep snow turned every step into torment,” Paddy would say. “Mist surrounded us and rain began to fall. We stumbled on, bent almost double against the blast; no breath or energy was left even for objurgation.”
Frozen and soaked to the skin, they fought through the snow at eight thousand feet, desperate for a warm sun but doomed if it came up. Paddy’s plan, they all knew, had failed. They’d never make it off that mountain before dawn. So shortly before sunrise, the Five Georges improvised a Plan B.