Marathoner Hopes the Long Road Leads to the Olympics : Running: Alfredo Rosas, who won in Long Beach, views the Los Angeles Marathon as a steppingstone to the Summer Games.

You could say Alfredo Rosas cleaned up at the Long Beach Marathon earlier this month.

Rosas, 32, a maintenance worker in the Long Beach Unified School District, won the event in 2 hours, 18 minutes, 40 seconds. He also earned $10,000.

“I planned to go there and be in the top five, but as the race was going on I felt pretty good,” said Rosas, a graduate of El Segundo High School and El Camino College. “I said, ‘Wow! I’m keeping the strength.’ I was really surprised.”

Rosas’ wife, Mary, a Spanish teacher at Long Beach Poly High, said the victory was special because many of her husband’s friends and co-workers were in attendance.

“It was like his hometown crowd,” she said. “It was very exciting for me. They were announcing where the lead runners were, and at the 15-mile mark he was in second place. A little later he was in third place. At the 20-mile mark he was in first place, and at the 24-mile mark he had a one-minute lead.”

Rosas is a veteran marathon runner, having competed in Boston, Chicago, San Diego and Los Angeles, where he placed ninth in 1989. He has also won more than 20 road races. But he has never attained his biggest goal: competing in the Olympics. He failed to make the 1984 and 1988 teams.

Rosas, a San Pedro resident, is hopeful that 1992 will be his year. After competing in the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, he will prepare for the Olympic Trials on April 11 in Columbus, Ohio. If he finishes in the top three at the Trials, he will qualify for the team.

Rosas’ training schedule will depend on his finish in the Trials. If he makes the U.S. team, he will not run a marathon until the Olympic Games. If he fails to make the team, he will compete in four or five more marathons this year.

Competing in that many marathons a year is considered unorthodox for a distance runner, but Rosas believes it has helped him improve. The average world-class marathoner runs two or three marathons a year.

Another difference between Rosas and most world-class runners is that he does not have a coach. He trains on his own by running 80 miles a week (10 miles Monday through Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday). He skips speed work on the track and never trains with weights. As a result, Rosas said, he lacks a finishing kick.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated,” said the 5-foot-6, 130-pound Rosas. “But I haven’t missed a day of this.”

Rosas started running as a junior at El Segundo High because he wanted to trim his physique. He said he weighed 165 as a junior and finished last at most cross-country meets.

By the end of his junior season, however, he improved dramatically, and by his senior year he was one of the school’s best distance runners.

His success continued at El Camino College, where he was the state community college 10,000-meter champion as a freshman in 1980. He also finished third at the state cross-country meet.

As a sophomore at El Camino, Rosas placed second at the state cross-country meet. He also broke the school 10,000-meter record with a 30:12.15 time that still stands.

“Speaking very conservatively, he was the toughest athlete I’ve ever coached,” said El Camino Associate Athletic Director Dave Shannon, who was the school’s track and cross-country coach for 11 years. “He never missed a practice. He could push himself harder than virtually any athlete I’ve ever seen. I can see him self-coached because he knows what he has to do and he does it.”

Shannon said he has seen few athletes who possess Rosas’ combination of dedication and natural ability, pointing to Rosas’ improvement in his two years at El Camino.

“If I’ve had 500 distance runners, he’s definitely one of the best,” Shannon said. “He has a tremendous cardiovascular system. He’s great with hills, and that’s what makes him so good. He’s so consistent and so tough.”

After El Camino, Rosas attended Kansas State, where he ran a 29:12 to break the school’s 10,000-meter record as a junior. Rosas placed second at the Big Eight Conference cross-country championships and fifth in the 10,000 meters at the conference meet. He never qualified for the NCAA meet, however.

He entered and won the Wichita Marathon shortly after completing his collegiate career. In 1989, he won the Palos Verdes and Culver City marathons and ran a personal-best 2:15 to win the Las Vegas Marathon in 1990.

Shannon thinks Rosas can continue to be competitive for several years.

“He’s so fit at 32 that I don’t see much drop-off,” Shannon said. “I see him on Sundays and I’ve seen no change in him fitness-wise. He has good bone structure and he’s light on his feet. He doesn’t bang away on the ground.”

Mary Rosas said she and the couple’s two children, Heather, 7, and Michael, 5, are used to her husband’s hectic schedule.

“We never see each other,” she said half jokingly. “I work days and he works nights. In our lifestyle everything revolves around marathons. We eat lots of (carbohydrates), fruits and vegetables.”

The family support serves as a motivator for Rosas, who said he can’t imagine ever getting burned out on running.

“I feel I’ll do this as long as my legs can do it,” he said. “You know, it really helps with stress.”