FOX RUNNING

When a young Apache gift running beside Route 60 is wrestled down and bundled away--practically abducted it seems--by track coach Calvin and two of his star proteges, one has an uneasy flashback to the awkward, abrasive toughness that marred Zanballer and Jesus Song. Happily, though, Knudson soon falls into the loosest, most economical stride she has shown so far. Fox Running, who lives up to her name but seldom speaks, refuses to conform to Coach Calvin's super-competitive training schedule of going from ""HURT to PAIN to AGONY twice a day."" But she hangs around the Utah campus and is soon teaching buddy Kathy ""Sudden"" Hart, an Olympic gold medalist washed up at nineteen, to love running again--on a regime of ten-mile races through the sagebrush, pizza training meals, and the motto ""your legs are your best friends."" Not that the spirit of competition is dead; Fox Running and Kathy eventually make their way to the LA Olympics where they break records in a veritable orgy of wishfulfillment. Despite some grandstanding here and there, the relaxed female comradeship and the heady joys of long-distance running bring this liberatingly, energetically, alive.