Chapter 233. Carstalked
DANTE
I had run this route, or a version of it, before every competition for fifteen years.
Not the same streets, never the same city twice in a row, but the same architecture underneath it. Forty minutes. Light cardio, nothing that taxed the legs the day before a match mattered.
There was no music in unfamiliar cities and no headphones. A coach had told me once, early on, that a player who didn't notice the room he was standing in wouldn’t last in this sport. The habit had outlived the coach. Outlived three more after him. Outlived the version of me who'd needed telling.
Chicago in December was cold enough to empty the sidewalks by six-forty in the morning. The light was good, low, flat across the buildings, and the air had that sharp winter edge that woke the
