Schiro-O’Brien Comes Back in Big Way--With Spot in Olympic Marathon

On May 1 in Pittsburgh, 21-year-old Cathy Schiro-O’Brien re-emerged on the national running scene for the first time since 1985, placing third in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials.

By running the 26.2 miles in 2 hours 30 minutes 18 seconds, four seconds behind runner-up Nancy Ditz, Schiro-O’Brien earned a trip to Seoul, South Korea, for the Olympic Games.

Sunday in San Diego, she’ll run her final tuneup, the America’s Finest City Half Marathon from Cabrillo National Monument to Balboa Park beginning at 7 a.m.

It was not that long ago that Cathy Schiro was a child running prodigy, and everyone sat back and waited for great things to happen.

And mostly, they did.

At 13, as a freshman at Dover High School in New Hampshire, Schiro competed in the Kinney National Cross-Country championship and placed 19th among the nation’s best high school runners. In the next two years, she was 10th and then third.

In May of her junior year, at age 16, Schiro was the youngest runner in the 1984 Olympic marathon trials in Olympia, Wash. She ran well for most of the race, but faded slightly when the unfamiliar distance took its toll. She finished ninth in 2:34:24, still a world junior record.

As a senior, Schiro finished her progression in the Kinney meet with a victory. She went to the University of Oregon in the fall of 1985. More records and college championships were expected.

But they didn’t come.

The running world suspected burnout, the disease that affects runners who become too good too fast.

“People wanted to put the lable ‘burnout’ on her,” said her coach, Bruce Lehane of Boston University. “It was just a matter of, she lost direction and focus, and she lost confidence. She found out that college just didn’t fit into her life.”

Schiro was unhappy at Oregon; the distance from home was a factor. After one semester, she returned to New Hampshire. That failed to immediately solve her problems.

“After coming back from Oregon, I was just sort of floundering,” she said. “I was being coached kind of over the phone, and I didn’t have people to train with. I was relying on myself and not really enjoying it.”

That’s about the time Lehane became her coach.

“She was trying to get herself going really for quite a while,” Lehane said, noting that she also had a number of injury problems. “She was struggling. The big problem was she was so very successful in high school and did a lot of running in high school.

“I suppose a little bit she’s under the magnifying glass because of that. It took her a little while leaving high school to find her nitch. It was a matter of not letting the lack of success get to her. I try to give a lot of encouragement. She’s so young for a marathon runner, and that’s so out of the mainstream. I tell her that time can work on your side, and you don’t have to feel pressure.”

At the same time, she discovered a number of Boston-area runners who spent their winters training in Auckland, New Zealand, which has a big running community.

“When I went down there the first time, I didn’t even have a place to stay,” she said.

She had heard New Zealanders were willing to take in foreigners and soon found temporary housing. Not long after, she found someone with whom she would live on a permanent basis. Boston-based runner Mike O’Brien became her husband soon after.

“It (training in New Zealand) was very good for her the first year,” Lehane said. “It brought her out of ‘Cathy Schiro, high school star, what happened to you?’ Down there they didn’t know who she was.”

Lehane said the New Zealand trips--which Schiro has taken the past two winters, running 100 miles a week on the hilly Waitakere mountain range--weren’t the only reason for her recent success.

“Her love of running basically is what kept her there,” he said. “The hardest time is when you are down low. She functions very well at the top. For Cathy, the pressure at the top doesn’t faze her in the least. Her problem is getting from down low. It’s normal for her to be up front and doing mind-blowing things.”

Such as completing the final 10-kilometers of the ’88 trails race with a twinge in her hamstring, and making up time in the process.

“I think I went into it pretty confident, thinking if all went well I should make the team,” Schiro-O’Brien said. “At the time (the pack) broke down to four runners, I felt really confident that I was going to make the team. I was feeling so good.”

Until she reached the final 10K.

“The other two girls who made the team (Margaret Gross and Ditz) made a little surge, and right about that time I started having hamstring problems, which had affected me earlier in my training,” Schiro-O’Brien said. “It progressively got worse, but luckily I was able to hold my own. At that point I began worrying that maybe Lisa (Weidenbach, who finished fourth) was going to come back, and something was going to happen. Fortunately, nothing did.

“I didn’t care about first or second or third place, all I cared about was making the team. I just knew if I could stay close to (the top two) I would make the team. I just concentrated on going with those two, rather than going backwards and letting myself lose concentration, running in my own little world and falling back.”

To tune up for the trials marathon, Schiro-O’Brien won the New Bedford (Mass.) half marathon. She hopes the San Diego race Sunday provides the same kind of momentum.

“I wanted to run something about the same distance (as New Bedford) before the Olympics,” she said. “I was looking around. and I thought about the San Diego half, which I heard of in the past and always wanted to do and never really had the opportunity. It just fit in perfectly. It’s a good build up for my preparation for the marathon. It’s a good distance to do and close to the kind of pace I would be running for the marathon.”

She said her hamstring is fine and that she expects to show off her Olympic form.

“I put pressure on myself because I think I should be able to probably win it,” she said. “I know that I’m in good shape, and I’ve trained well the last few months since the trials. I’m not like peaking for this race. I’m here to run hard and do well.”