Jacobs Gains Ground on the Pack as She Pursues World of Potential

Regina Jacobs radiates optimism. She always seems to be smiling, laughing or joking around, a real happy-go-lucky lady.

Except when you mention The Athletics Congress track championships of 1986. Then she becomes very serious. Her brown eyes lose their sparkle and the beaming smile disappears.

Considered one of the favorites in the 1,500 meters, Jacobs finished last in the 12-woman field, running a dismal 4:23.52, 12 seconds off her personal best at the time (4:11.33) and more than 15 seconds behind winner Linda Detlefsen.

“I was disappointed,” Jacobs says, frowning. “I was really disappointed.

“It’s an awful thing to prepare yourself for a whole year and come into a championship meet and run like that. Especially when you discover that you were capable of running 4:02.”

Three weeks after the TAC meet, Jacobs, 24, ran 4:02.6 at an all-comers meet at Birmingham High. The time moved her to fourth on the all-time U.S. women’s list in the 1,500. Mary Slaney holds the American record of 3:57.12.

“Running 4:23 in a championship meet was ridiculous,” she added, “It was really pathetic. That was humiliating, too. People don’t like to talk to you when you run that badly. They think you have some kind of a disease or something.”

The pain of Jacobs’ biggest athletic disappointment has subsided, replaced by thrill of her greatest athletic accomplishment.

She won the 1,500 at this year’s TAC championships in San Jose in June. Her time of 4:03.70 is the fastest in the U.S. this year and the second fastest of her career.

More importantly, the victory earned her a berth on the U.S. team that will compete in the second World Track and Field Championships in Rome beginning Saturday. She is joined on the team by Denean Howard of Sylmar and Alice Brown of Panorama City.

Jacobs’ performance in San Jose fulfilled the potential that her coach, Chuck DeBus of the Los Angeles Track Club, saw in her 10 years ago.

“I knew she was a great talent the first time I saw her run,” DeBus said.

“I thought she could be one of the top middle-distance runners in the world by the time she was 25. I thought she could be an Olympic medalist.”

It didn’t take long for Jacobs to confirm her coach’s initial observation.

As a 13-year-old in 1977, her first year of competitive running, she was timed in 2:09.7 for 880 yards. The time, which still stands as the national age-group record, bettered Mary Decker’s previous record by three seconds.

After such an auspicious begining, however, Jacobs’ progress was painstakingly slow.

When she graduated from the Argyll Academy (now Campbell Hall High) in North Hollywood in 1981, her personal best was 2:06.47 for 800 meters. Though the time ranked her sixth on the national high school list, it paled in comparison to a 2:09.7 880 at 13.

DeBus said Jacobs’ progress was slow by design.

“I didn’t want to burn her out,” he said. “I’d seen too many good athletes who overtrained in high school and were burned out one or two years into college.”

To guard against burnout, Jacobs’ training schedule consisted of running three days a week from January through June.

From July through December, “I just let her be a kid,” DeBus said. “I just let her do things teen-agers do.”

DeBus designed Jacobs’ workouts for the sprint events, not the middle distances. She ran the 200 (25.6 personal best) and 400 (55.3) meters in high school and, occasionally, the 800.

Even though Jacobs rarely ran the 1,500, her best of 4:25 ranked fifth on the national high school list in 1981.

DeBus’ workouts also served a dual purpose. They helped Jacobs develop her leg speed and proper sprint form.

“Most distance runners have terrible mechanics when they sprint,” DeBus explained. “But Regina has very good sprint form.

“And that’s important when you compete on the international level, where races are usually won in the last 200 meters.”

Looking toward the future, DeBus worked to develop Jacobs’ kick. She would run with the pack early in the race, then surge to victory in the last 200 meters, sprinting past the early leaders.

Using this tactic, Jacobs won several age-group championships. She didn’t compete in the state high school championships because Argyll didn’t field a track team.

After graduating from high school, however, Jacobs made a radical change in tactics, becoming a front-runner at Stanford.

Her coach in Palo Alto, Brooks Johnson, geared her training toward long-distance strength, not speed. So Jacobs would lead races from start to finish.

The tactic was successful in dual meets, when she ran against inferior competition. But it failed in the heat of national-class racing, where Jacobs was often a contender but never a champion.

In retrospect, she realizes her mistake.

“If I had run then like I do now, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have won an NCAA championship,” she said. “But I was determined to lead and I never really had a chance.”

The closest Jacobs came was the 1985 NCAA cross-country meet, where she led for the first two miles before being overtaken by the kick of North Carolina State’s Suzie Tuffey.

Six months later, in April, 1986, Jacobs graduated from Stanford with a bachelors degree in English/communications and returned to the Los Angeles area to again train with DeBus.

Her reasons were simple.

“I put full faith in Chuck,” she says. “I don’t want to worry about the workouts. I let him take care of that. I run better if someone else is telling me what to do for training.”

After revamping Jacobs’ training regimen to again emphasize speed, DeBus felt she was ready to contend for a medal at the TAC championships in 1986.

He was shocked and dismayed when she finished last in the final.

“It was very, very disappointing to see her run that poorly,” DeBus said. “I knew she was in great shape but she just didn’t run well. She came apart under the pressure.”

In order to combat the pressure in 1987, Jacobs ran fewer races before the TAC championships.

“I took the pressure off her by not having her run the 1,500,” DeBus said. “When she came into the TAC meet, no one expected that much from her.”

No one expected her to run in the pack, either, but she did.

Staying in sixth place early in the race, Jacobs moved into second with 400 meters left. She burst into the lead with 250 meters remaining and won easily--and surprisingly.

Her finish--a final lap of 60.6 and a final 800 of 2:04.9--was spectacular.

“I had dreamed about it, visualized it so many times,” Jacobs recalls, almost in disbelief, “And it happened. It was just like a dual meet at Stanford. I won by two seconds and it was almost easy. I was elated.”

So was DeBus.

“She ran exactly as we had planned,” he said. “She didn’t get impatient. She didn’t panic. She hung back early in the race and then moved to the front when it was time.”

Jacobs also handled the pressure better.

“I’m just trying to relax more now,” she said. “Before, I just put too much pressure on myself when it came to the big races. I made too big a deal out of it.

“I realize now that it’s only a race.”

She also realizes that running in the pack suits her physical capabilities.

At 5-6, 111 pounds, Jacobs has large, powerful gluteal, quadricep and hamstring muscles, ideal for sprinting at the end of a race.

“I like being the hunter instead of the hunted,” she admits. “I don’t like leading. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that anymore.”

Jacobs’ final-lap speed could be a valuable asset in Rome if the pace lags early. She’ll be an underdog, but a tactical race would be to her advantage. Jacobs’ final 800 of 2:04.9 at the TAC meet shows she might be able to stay with the more experienced Europeans in a kickers’ race.

Romania’s Doina Melinte, the 1984 Olympic gold (800 meters) and silver medalist (1,500), and the Soviet Union’s Tatyana Samolenko, ranked No.1 in the world at 1,500 meters by Track and Field News last year, are the co-favorites.

Jacobs, however, isn’t conceding anything.

“I think I’ve got a good chance at placing in the top three,” she said. “TAC gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to kick off a slow pace. I ran the last lap in 60 seconds but it felt easy.

“On top of that I’m in the best shape of my life. So it’s hard not to run fast.”

How fast can she run?

Jacobs wouldn’t say, but DeBus would.

“I think she’ll run 3:56 within the next year,” he said. “She hasn’t come close to tapping her potential.”

Rome would be a good place to start.

At 22, Denean Howard of Sylmar is the “grand old lady” of American 400-meter runners.

Howard gained national prominence at 15 when she placed third in the 400 at the 1980 Olympic Trials.

She was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in 1981 and ’82 and won consecutive TAC titles from ‘81-’83.

Howard’s victory in the 1983 TAC meet qualified her for the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, where she failed to make the final in the 400 and placed fifth as a member of the 1,600-meter relay.

In 1984, she placed fifth in the 400 at the Olympic Trials and was an alternate on the Olympic 1,600-meter relay team.

She was slowed by injuries in 1985 and ’86 but has returned with a vengeance this year.

Howard placed third in both the TAC championships and Pan American Games. Her time of 50.72 in the Pan Am Games was her first personal best in five years.

She’ll run in the 400 and the 1,600-meter relay in Rome.

The U.S. team of Howard, Lillie Leatherwood-King, Diane Dixon and Valerie Brisco is favored to win the gold medal. East Germany and the Soviet Union will provide stiff competition.

Alice Brown burst onto the U.S. national sprint scene in 1980 during her sophomore season at Cal State Northridge, winning the 100 meters at the Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women championships, The Athletics Congress championships and the Olympic Trials.

Although she ranked first nationally and eighth worldwide, Brown didn’t compete in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow because of the U.S. boycott.

Her chance at Olympic glory came four years later in Los Angeles, where she won the silver medal in the 100 meters and the gold medal as a member of the 400-meter relay team.

Brown, whose personal best is 11.01, will run in those events again at the World Championships in Rome. Brown, who is coached by CSUN assistant Tony Veney, qualified for the U.S. team in June when she placed second in the 100 meters at the TAC Championships.

The key to Brown’s success at Rome will be her finish. Typically a strong starter, Brown, 26, will have to withstand the closing speed of East Germans Heike Drechsler and Marlies Gohr, Jamaican Merlene Ottey and U.S. teammates Pam Marshall and Diane Williams in the last 40 meters of the race.

Brown will team with Williams, Marshall and Florence Griffith on the U.S. 400-meter relay team. The quartet lowered the American record to 41.55 a week ago in West Berlin and could present a serious challenge to East Germany, which holds the world record of 41.37.