PLANNING AHEAD : Canyon Hurdler Sacrifices Early-Season Results for a Shot at Another Southern Section 4-A Title

Preparing an athlete to peak at the proper time is one of the most challenging tasks facing any track coach.

Gary Lindberg, the girls’ coach at Canyon High, helped Cindy Byrne do just that for the Southern Section 4-A Division track and field championships at Cerritos College in Norwalk last May.

Ranked fifth in the division in the 300-meter low hurdles, Byrne won the 4-A title in a personal best of 43.47 seconds--2.51 seconds under her previous best.

“That was just one of those races where everything clicked,” Byrne said. “It was a perfect race. Everything just came together. . . . I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a race like that again, where everything just falls into place like it did.”

Do not bother telling that to Lindberg, 45, because he expects the powerful, 5-9, 127-pound senior to run faster at this year’s Southern Section meet May 20.

But in order to achieve the optimum performance from his protege later in the season, Lindberg has sacrificed Byrne’s success in the early part of the season, just as he did in 1988.

Lindberg has increased the extent of Byrne’s training regimen, and the workouts have taken a toll on her times.

“There’s no doubt that she’d be running faster right now if she had done more speed and hurdle work in February and March,” Lindberg said. “But what good does it do if she runs her best times in early April when the 4-A championships are in late May?”

Byrne still has posted good times this spring. She ran a season best of 45.4 to place second in the Bishop Amat Invitational at Mt. San Antonio College a week ago. But hurdlers she defeated for the 4-A title--including Ilana Mazingo of Hawthorne--have run faster this season.

As a result, Byrne was a late entry in the invitational 300-meter hurdles at the Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High tonight. The invitational division draws a more elite field than the open division.

Until Thursday, when Janice Nichols of Bakersfield withdrew from the hurdles to concentrate on the 200 meters, Byrne was entered in the slower open race earlier in the day--even though she is the second-fastest returning hurdler in the state.

She also was entered in the open 100-meter low hurdles (best of 14.80), but she decided to drop that event in order to concentrate on the invitational 300 hurdles.

Lindberg would prefer Byrne to run both races because the 100 hurdles serve as a warm-up for the 300 hurdles, but he is not complaining.

“It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” he said. “I gave her a choice and she definitely wanted to be in the invitational.”

Before her late inclusion in the invitational field, Byrne had adopted a philosophical approach to running in the open meet.

“It doesn’t really bother me,” she said. “I’ll see those athletes again. A lot of them are going to run their best times right now and rip it up in the invitationals, but I’m confident that I’ll be running my best times at the end of the year when it counts.”

In order to assure that, Lindberg has increased the intensity of Byrne’s workouts. A year ago, she rarely ran intervals longer than 440 yards in workouts, but this year, Byrne has run 880, 660 and 550 repeats. The longer interval distances have improved her endurance and strength, and should translate into faster times when she refines her hurdling technique and sharpens her sprint speed later this season.

“I can feel myself starting to come around again,” said Byrne, who has lowered her season best by two seconds in the last three weeks. “I want to peak for the meets that count at the end, so I’m not that worried about how fast I’m running right now.”

Byrne is more specific about how fast she would like to run this season, however.

“Anything in the 42s would be nice,” she said. “Anything faster than last year would be nice, even if it’s a 43.1. If I can improve upon last year’s time, I’ll be satisfied. I’d love to defend my title, but I know it won’t be easy.”

Defending her 4-A title would be Byrne’s first step toward qualifying for the state championships, which ended in disaster last season when she was involved in a car accident on the way to the finals of the 300 hurdles.

Although she suffered no serious injuries in the accident, Byrne’s nerves were frazzled and she failed to finish the race.

“It was just a very stressful situation,” she said. “I didn’t know if we were going to get to the meet on time. My coach gave me the option to pull out, but I couldn’t, not after working so hard all year. Once I got out there, I just wasn’t into it like I should have been.”

Lindberg first saw Byrne compete when she set a school record in the 100-meter dash (12.6) as a freshman in 1986, but he thought her future was as a hurdler.

“I just didn’t see her improving that much as a sprinter,” he said. “But I thought she had the potential to be a very good hurdler.”

Lindberg introduced Byrne to the hurdles in workouts as a freshman, but she didn’t compete in her first hurdles race until the 1987 Burbank Invitational. When Lindberg entered her in the 300 hurdles, he didn’t tell her until the day of the meet.

“She wasn’t real happy with me,” Lindberg said. “But it turned out OK . . . “

Because she won the race.

Byrne, a sophomore in her second year on the varsity, was terrified before the race.

“I felt like I wanted to cry,” she said. “Here I was on the way to this big invitational and he tells me that I’m entered in a race I’ve never run before. . . . But I started to like the hurdles after I won.”

Byrne placed seventh in the 300 hurdles in the 4-A championships that season, but Lindberg said that she didn’t become a hurdler until last year when Lindberg worked on Byrne’s technique.

“She’s surprisingly strong for her size,” Lindberg said. “That’s her strength. But there’s still a lot of room for improvement in her form. We’ll work a lot more on that in the coming weeks and hopefully, she’ll run under 43 at the end of the season.”

If she does, another 4-A title could be the reward.