Pressure Made Rabbitt Run : Cross-country: But now, UC Irvine athlete is realizing her potential by <i> not </i> thinking so much about winning.

There is so much to think about, and so little of it seems to escape Buffy Rabbitt.

Consider the concept of potential. Or rather, consider the concept that one’s potential is unfathomable.

“I think it’s impossible to know your potential,” said Rabbitt, once a spindly Newport Harbor High School freshman who couldn’t run a mile, and now an All-American runner four times over at UC Irvine. “Your potential is only manifested in the races you run. How can you know?”

Ponder the idea of fame, or even of local renown.

“I don’t like how people assign importance to people they don’t know, just for having run a time,” Rabbitt said. “I just don’t see myself that way.”

Besides, she says, in her case there is the matter of her name, which is a big, hanging pitch to punsters everywhere.

“I think that a large part of my “fame” is the fact that I have a humorous name,” Rabbitt said.

Examine, analyze, articulate--Rabbitt can do all those things as well as she can run a cross-country course or the 1,500 meters.

And that, Rabbitt has decided, can be a problem. Too much thinking.

Last spring, Rabbitt, then a junior, set her mind on having an outstanding track season in her first season back after a year in France. Not only would she qualify for the NCAA championships, she decided, but she would run a personal best.

She concentrated and she planned. She diligently recorded pre-race thoughts and post-race analyses.

And she struggled to qualify for the NCAAs, and never beat her best time.

Troubled, she thought again.

“I came to the conclusion that one reason I didn’t reach my goals was because I put so much pressure on myself,” Rabbitt said.

Was it fear of failure that hounded her? Or for Rabbitt, friendly but soft-spoken, was it fear of fame?

All Rabbitt knew was that it was pressure, overwhelming pressure.

So now she is playing the grandest mind game of all--she is studiously not thinking about it, with great success.

As sixth-ranked Irvine goes into the NCAA cross-country championships Monday in Knoxville, Tenn., Rabbitt is achieving the--pardon the term-- potential her coaches have seen since she was a freshman, when she became the first Irvine woman to make All-American in cross-country.

This season, she has won five of the six meets she has competed in, including the Big West Conference championship and the NCAA regional championship. In the only race she didn’t win, she finished second to Wisconsin’s Suzy Favor, who is considered the top middle-distance runner in the country.

Vince O’Boyle, the Irvine coach, is hoping for a top-five finish at the NCAA championships for Irvine’s deep team.

And for Rabbitt, he says, “top 10, conservatively.”

Rabbitt, of course, isn’t thinking about it, if she can help it.

“I’m just looking at a race as an opportunity to have fun, just to do my best with out being intimidated,” Rabbitt said.

Nervousness, once a pre-race staple, has grown more rare.

There are days this season when she is not nervous until an hour before the race. This in contrast to the Olympic trials in 1988, when she was nervous for weeks in advance and then was disappointed in her performance, failing to make the final.

“I really like to keep the nervousness down,” Rabbitt said. “I’m finding it doesn’t help me. I think there’s a difference between that energy you have that can be termed adrenaline and that almost gut-wrenching feeling that can feel like ground glass in your stomach. I think really it can be determined that has no positive effects.”

This has been a season in which Rabbitt, for so long a follower, is Irvine’s leader.

She has to be. No one else can keep up.

Before now, despite her talent, she had been a reluctant star, deferring to such older runners as Jill Harrington and Beth McGrann. In Irvine’s team-oriented program, that was praiseworthy, and it was something Rabbitt enjoyed.

“It’s easier to put out your best effort when you have the support of a group,” Rabbitt said. “You can help each other to achieve. It can be as simple as when you’re hurting, someone saying, ‘Come on.’ ”

Now, she has stepped forward, alone if she has to.

“This year, she’s not running with people,” O’Boyle said. “Before she would have either Brigid (Stirling) or (Harrington) and kind of match up. This year she has let herself make the decision, ‘I’ll go out, and if people want to run with me, fine.’ We haven’t had other people to run with her.”

Rabbitt has been running at the front. She hasn’t much known who is running behind her, or who she will compete with at Knoxville next week.

“I almost purposefully leave myself in the dark,” she said. “I don’t have time to read Track & Field News. All right, I admit it. I don’t know who has what times or who got third in the Pac-10.”

Goals? The one most often mentioned is simply to do her best, not set her sights on times or places.

“That practice produces pressure that I feel I don’t need,” Rabbitt said. “I’m self-motivated enough that I know I’m going to race to the best of my ability no matter what place I get or what time I get. I don’t need to motivate myself by saying I have to catch that person to get second.”

It sounds simple, almost too simple.

“I know sports psychologists are really adamant about preparing for your race,” Rabbitt said. “Ironically, this works for me.”

She is doing what she did when she began running, as a high school freshman in glasses and deck shoes who couldn’t complete the training run. She says she is just trying her best.

“Supposedly as you grow older, you get more intelligent and learn more and more complex things,” Rabbitt said. “The idea of being in a sport in order to try to do the best you can is a simple one I probably always want to have with me.”

She will take it with her into the NCAA cross-country championships, and into her final track season this spring.

After that, another chance in the Olympic Trials lies ahead.

“I haven’t given a great deal of thought to the next trials because I’m concerned about the here and now, this cross-country season,” Rabbitt said. “I’m not even thinking about track.”

But she knows the trials await, because people will not let her forget. When Rabbitt does remember it, she thinks about the disappointment of last time.

“I didn’t think I was at my peak,” she said. “The next time, I want to feel ready and not feel so intimidated. If I ever do reach that level again, I want to feel confident so intimidation will not hinder my potential.”