Instant Success for UCI’s Goodrich : Track: Sophomore didn’t want to run the 10,000 meters, but in her first attempt, she qualified for NCAA championships.

It was about a year ago, out for a long run among the Orange groves of Irvine, that Vince O’Boyle first began talking to Traci Goodrich about the 10,000 meters.

“You know, someday, the 10,000 may be your race,” said O’Boyle, the UC Irvine cross-country and track coach, as he watched how well she was handling the distance workout.

“Ugh,” was basically Goodrich’s response. “I can’t imagine running 25 laps around a track,” she said.

As a youngster, Goodrich used to occasionally run 10-kilometer road races with her father, Ken.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I never liked them. I thought, ‘This is prolonged pain. This hurts for 40 minutes.’ ”

Goodrich, usually a 5,000-meter specialist, finally ran her first 10,000-meter race on a track last month, at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays.

It didn’t hurt for 40 minutes. It hurt for 34 minutes .34 seconds.

Goodrich, in her first attempt at the distance, qualified for the NCAA championships by bettering the standard of 34:20.

“It didn’t hit me until later that I had made it. I’m really excited,” said Goodrich, a sophomore who will run the 10,000 and the 5,000 in the Big West Conference championships today and Saturday at Irvine’s track stadium.

She is all set for the 10,000 at the NCAA championships at Eugene, Ore., May 29 to June 1, as one of several Irvine athletes likely to be in the meet.

Goodrich still is hoping to reach the provisional qualifying time of 16:45 in the 5,000, meaning she could be chosen if the field is not filled by runners who meet the automatic qualifying time of 16:16. Goodrich’s best 5,000 this season is 16:52.14, second in the Big West to the 16:36.89 by Irvine’s Buffy Rabbitt.

Goodrich will not run all-out in the 10,000 at the Big West meet today, saving some energy for the 5,000 Saturday and for the upcoming NCAAs.

Goodrich’s instant success at the 10,000 might be baffling and frustrating to runners who have concentrated on that distance with less success. It doesn’t seem fair in Goodrich’s eyes, either.

“I have a lot of friends on the team I can see trying really hard to qualify,” she said, half-apologetically. “I ran one race, and boom.”

O’Boyle, who coaches Goodrich in cross-country and handles the men’s track team while Danny Williams coaches the women, doesn’t find it surprising. Partly because it was his idea, naturally, and partly because he had seen it done before.

Beth McGrann, who in 1989 set the school 10,000 record (33:07.1), also qualified for the NCAAs the first time she ran the distance.

O’Boyle saw the potential in Goodrich just as he saw it in McGrann.

“You could see it (with Goodrich) during cross-country. Our Tuesday runs are longer runs. You could see that on the longer run, she’d just get into it. She could keep her heart rate fairly controlled and not look like she was exerting a lot.”