Expectations Keeping Taylor on the Run : Cross-country: One of nation’s top runners is trying to figure out how she will top her four-year career at Edison High.

It was a disconcerting first week of school for Shelley Taylor. The phone calls started last Wednesday night, the same day she couldn’t get Rick Astley out of her head, and three days before the first cross-country meet of her senior season at Edison High School.

“I’m starting to get a little worried about it,” Taylor said.

There are simple explanations, though.

It seems the callers were college coaches, hoping to woo Taylor, one of the nation’s top runners, to their schools next year.

And this Astley guy is a pop-rocker, whose song Taylor couldn’t stop thinking about during a training run. Some runners daydream; Taylor listens to music only she can hear.

“It just kind of popped in there and wouldn’t get out,” she said. “It was kind of annoying, kind of strange.”

The days before an upcoming meet are always a nerve-wracking time for Taylor, especially now that it’s her senior year. Honestly, she said, it was the calls that made her the most nervous.

“I definitely want to run in college,” she said. “Really, I’m clueless (about where to go). I’ll have to start looking some more. I’m completely undecided.”

You can’t blame Taylor, who always seems to be running behind. Except, of course, when she’s actually running. After all, she only started running on a lark to get into better shape for her favorite sport--soccer. When she was a freshman at Edison she ran merely in hopes of impressing the soccer coaches by being in terrific shape when the season started in December.

She wound up being one of the best cross-country and track runners in Orange County history, and never made an impact on the soccer field.

As a freshman, she advanced to the CIF State cross-country meet with all of three months’ training.

As a sophomore, Taylor became the first county girl in eight years to win a Southern Section individual championship when she defeated Jeannine Rothman of Westlake by two seconds in the 4-A race. She won the section’s Division II-AA title last year, went on to place second in the state meet Division II race, and was 12th in the Kinney Cross-Country Nationals.

She led the nation for much of her junior track season a with a 4-minute 53-second 1,600 meter time at the Arcadia Invitational. Later, she lowered that time to 4:52.38, though by season’s end four others had run faster. She also lowered her 800-meter best to 2:12.

So what does Taylor do for a closing number? How will she wrap up her fourth year of extraordinary running? With league and section titles having become expected, are national championships or records in the works?

Anything is possible. Harrier magazine ranks her among the top 25 girls’ cross-country runners in the nation.

Most likely, Taylor said her toughest task will be whipping the pressure and doubt that sometimes plague her. Now that people expect so much from her, now that magazines rank her among the best, she’ll have to think about something else to relax and forget running for a while.

In the past, it hasn’t been easy.

“The second the alarm clock goes off, my mind’s going,” she said. “I get nervous a lot, stressed out. If I get too uptight, maybe I’ll call a friend. Actually, I’ve been doing that too much lately.”

Most often, the pressure Taylor feels is self-imposed. She said the best way to relax is to run, which seems like a vicious cycle. Run to forget running?

“It relaxes me if I have a hard day at school,” she said. “I can go run and relieve tension and stuff.”

She rarely goes more than a few days without running. She misses it too much, she said.

Her favorite workouts are run along the bluffs above the Santa Ana River near Estancia High and on the horse trails in Central Park in Huntington Beach. Her love for cross-country running is rooted in those off-road adventures. It’s boring to keep running circles on a track, she said.

“Everybody has their bad days, especially when you’re running every day and there’s tons of other things you’d rather be doing,” Taylor said. “I like hill workouts. I feel really good on them. Call me crazy, but I enjoy running hills.”

It wasn’t so long ago that Taylor decided she liked running, period. Now, those days seem to be over for good, though she keeps learning new things about her sport. Last week, it was a new experience dealing with college recruiting. Who knows what it will be this week?

“I’ve really learned a lot,” Taylor said. “I’ve gone from the most inexperienced runner to . . . I think I’m getting better. I’ve grown to like running a lot.”