With Olympics in Sight, Her Dedication Shifts Into High Gear

Unlike many world-class athletes, Joan Hansen has never felt the need to commit seemingly endless years of her life in pursuit of glory.

Train rigorously for years without a break?

No way.

Get psyched for races years in advance?

Not hardly.

Instead, Hansen, 31, and a 1984 Olympian, seems to reach her athletic potential in spurts. Intentionally.

“I don’t have that kind of personality where I say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to get out and train!’ ” Hansen said.

“I wouldn’t ever describe myself as a fanatic. I can focus well on anything I do . . . but I do not want that focus to become overly unhealthy or overly obsessive. I like to tread that fine line between obsession and hobby.”

And right now, running is once again becoming less of a hobby.

After nearly a year off from training--and several years removed from her best performances--Hansen, a Los Alamitos resident, started again last October. She has dedicated herself to regaining the world-class form that helped her set an indoor world record in the two-mile in 1982, and make the Olympic team in ’84.

“It takes something pretty big to keep her motivated, but if it’s the Olympics, Joan gets pretty excited about that,” said Robert Vaughn, coach of a Dallas-based club who has worked on and off with Hansen for the past six years.

“It will not be easy. But if you’re talented, things can happen,” he said. “Joan’s very, very talented.”

Unfortunately for Hansen, she didn’t get to prove her talent when she most wanted, in the 1984 Games.

Running in the women’s 3,000-meters--the race most remember only for the Mary Decker-Zola Budd tangle--Hansen also suffered a fall just less than half-way through the race when she tripped on the heels of Portugal’s Aurora Cunha.

Unlike Decker, Hansen got up and continued running. Although she was in last place when she got up, Hansen passed four runners and finished eighth in the field of 12.

“I saw (Decker) go down and lay on the ground, but my main concern was to keep going,” Hansen told Times staff writer Curt Holbreich last year. “I knew she was down. I hoped she would get back up. I cared about what happened. I could relate. But I also knew in the middle of a race, there was no way I could stop and help her.”

A proficient swimmer while growing up in Phoenix, Hansen didn’t start running until her sophomore year at Arizona. Her identical twin, Joy Hansen, also grew up a swimmer, but joined the Wildcat cross-country team as a freshman and qualified for AIAW nationals in her first race. Joan decided to join her sister, and, the next year, walked on to the track and field team.

“We realized training for one hour on a track every day was better than five hours in a pool,” Joan said.

The Hansen twins, petite, blonde and blue-eyed, became a quick and well-known success. Joan, a six-time AIAW All-American at Arizona, and Joy, now a world-class triathlete, appeared on the cover of Runner’s World magazine. The cover photo featured the two sitting on opposite shoulders of Steve Scott.

Joan, the faster twin, qualified for U.S. national teams for five years between 1981 and ’85. In that time she traveled around the world for competition. Of the travel, Hansen said she will always be grateful as it gave her an appreciation of other countries and other life styles.

On a 1982 trip to Bucharest, Romania, for the World University Games, Hansen remembers going outside of the area reserved for the athletes to find hundreds of people picketing the event.

“I asked what the signs said. I was told the people wanted the games stopped. The people were demanding food,” Hansen said. “Inside (the athletic area), we the athletes were entitled to as much food as we could eat. Outside people were starving.”

On another trip, Hansen said she remembers a group of Lebanese athletes playing guitar and singing happily while many of the American athletes complained about the unfamiliar conditions.

“We asked why they were so happy and they said for once they could go outside and train without fear of being hurt or killed,” Hansen said. “In Lebanon, they had to train inside their homes because the fighting had gotten too violent outside.”

Hansen said it was experiences such as these that helped shape her outlook on sports and life. Last year, while living in Coronado, she helped start the San Diego Athletes Fund, a nonprofit organization designed to raise money for San Diego athletes training for the Olympics.

Hansen also has been active in volunteering her time to children, giving classroom presentations aimed at encouraging development of self-worth and self-improvement.

“When I was young, Olympians seemed special to me,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I realize that the negative press that some Olympians are attracting isn’t (good for the sport). . . . I want to show that Olympians can have a positive influence, too.”

The Long Run: After finishing second the past two years, Mike McMahan of Laguna Beach won his first Orange 24-hour Run last weekend at Fred Kelly Stadium in Orange.

For the past two years, McMahan, a philosophy professor at Saddleback College and UC Irvine, had taken the immediate lead in the race, one that always starts at 6 p.m. on a Friday and runs non-stop until 6 p.m. Saturday. But in 1987 and 1988, McMahan faded badly around the 100-mile mark, and was passed both years by eventual winner Leo Marquez of Bakersfield. Marquez set the event record last year with 137 1/2 miles.

But this year, McMahan, 41, maintained his lead through the entire 24 hours, finishing with 132 1/4 miles, or 51/4 miles further than his previous best.

Tom Terry, 44, of Culver City was second with 128 1/4 miles, and Marquez, 50, was third with 115. And Erma Hutton of Pasadena (fourth overall with 108 3/4) and Meg Slavin of Irvine (sixth with 104) became the first women in seven years to break the 100-mile mark at the Orange race.

Twenty-six runners started the 100-mile run, though, according to race director Don Pycior, “Some hit 50 miles and said, ‘OK . . . that’s it.’ ”

Other highlights? “Well, one guy went 40 miles juggling three tennis balls,” Pycior said. “But he was just one of those kind of guys who sign up at the last second.”

Forty miles of juggling? An impulse decision?

Running Notes

Rick Rengel, next year’s race chairman for the Bastille Day 8K in Newport Beach, said race organizers have decided to put together a $100,000 bonus package next year for any Bastille Day entrant who breaks the 8K world record. The race, proceeds of which benefit the United Cerebral Palsy, is hoping to attract a large field of world-class runners. Interested sponsors are welcomed to contact Rengel at any time. . . . Loeschhorn’s Masters Men, a group of 30-and-over runners, broke the men’s masters relay record at the Orange 24-hour Run. The team of 10 compiled 221 1/4 miles, a big improvement over the former mark of 208 miles.

Race Schedule:

Thursday: College of the Canyons 5K cross-country series. 7 p.m., College of the Canyons, Valencia. Very challenging cross-country course. Call (805) 944-2511.

Paramount Ranch Cross-Country 2- and 3-mile Gran Prix. 6:30 p.m., Paramount Ranch, Agoura. Call (818) 992-6219.

Legg Lake 5K Evening Cougar Run. 6:30 p.m.

Saturday: Thirty-fifth Huntington Beach Distance Derby. 10-, 3- and 1 1/2-mile runs, all start and finish at Huntington Beach Pier. Starting times: 10 mile at 7:30 a.m., 3 mile at 10 a.m., 1 1/2 mile at 10:30 a.m. Call 536-5486.

Irvine Waterslide 5 & 10K. 8 a.m., starts at 23 Lake St., between Barranca and Alton, Irvine. Call 546-3925.

MADD Run for Fiscal Fitness 10K. 7:30 p.m., Balboa Park, San Diego. Call (619) 272-8316.

Hot August Days 5K. 7 a.m., Green Valley Lake, approximately 4 miles north of Arrowbear on Highway 18 in San Bernardino Mountains. Elevation 7,000. Call (714) 867-7757.

Tuesday: Corona del Mar Fun Runs. Three-mile, all-dirt, cross-country course in Newport Beach’s Upper Newport Bay. Starts approximately one-half mile north of intersection of Back Bay Road and San Joaquin Drive in Newport Beach. 6 p.m. Call 644-5026.