Glusac Is Again the Favorite at Kinney : Cross-Country: Fallbrook runner is on a streak as she hopes to bounce back from last year’s 30th-place finish.

Despite her ability to run away from the best distance runners in the state, Fallbrook High senior Milena Glusac can’t seem to out-pace a more ardent foe--the media.

Glusac enters her third Kinney National Championship at 10 a.m. today at Morley Field.

Several hurdles presented themselves to Glusac as she ran toward today’s race, enough that earlier this year a newspaper wondered whether Glusac, who had battled various illnesses for almost a year, had “plateaued.”

Glusac supplied her own answer as she went on to win the Southern California Invitational, the Mt. SAC Invitational, the Palomar League finals, the San Diego Section finals, the State finals and last week’s Kinney Western Regional in Fresno.

But in her race against the media, there were more foes. On Tuesday another newspaper led its front sports page with a headline declaring “Glusac still has a thing or two to prove.”

It was alluding to last year’s Kinney National Championship which Glusac started as a favorite but finished 30th out of 32 runners. Barely able to walk upon crossing the finish line, Glusac learned shortly thereafter she suffered from a lack of glycogen, which deprived her muscles of oxygen and sugar during the race.

That was the only cross-country race Glusac has ever lost, and although it would appear she has the opportunity for redemption at Saturday’s 14th running of the Kinney National, Glusac doesn’t see it that way.

When asked if last year’s finish does indeed give her something “to prove,” Glusac repeated a four-year-old refrain.

“I just try to run the best I can,” she said. “All anybody can ask for is to try their hardest.”

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Glusac, who finished seventh at the Kinney National Championships as a sophomore, again is considered a favorite after winning the Western Regional last week in Fresno with a time of 17 minutes 11 seconds over the 5,000-meter course. That was 16 seconds faster than second-place Amy Skieresz, a sophomore at Westlake Village.

There are several other “favorites,” including one freshman, Jenni Brown of Salem (Ohio) High. Brown won the Midwest Regional, held in Kenosha, Wis., in 18:50.37, almost 16 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Carrie Tollefson of Boyd High in Dawson, Minn.

Northeast Regional winner Amanda White, a senior at Dulaney High in Cockeysville, Md., also has to be considered a pace-setter. Not only did she have the widest margin of victory out of all four regional winners (36 seconds), she also is the top returning finisher from last year’s championship when she placed second.

Two strong runners emerged from the South Regional. Karen Godlock, a senior at Polk County High in Charlotte, N.C., won at 17:38--one second ahead of senior Kathi Ward of Lincoln High in Tallahassee, Fla.

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No clear favorites can be sifted from the field of 32 in the boys’ race, scheduled to begin at 10:40. All four qualifying races were especially tight. In the Western Regional, only 19 seconds separated the top qualifier from the eighth. In the Northeast, the margin was 18 seconds. It was 16 seconds in the Midwest and 4.5 in the South.

* That South Regional was won by Brian Good, a junior at B.T. Washington High in Pensacola, Fla. Good, who finished in 15:26.5, was the only underclassman to win any of the boys’ regionals.

To further muddy the forecast, two top-10 returnees from last year’s championship were out-paced in last week’s Midwest Regional. Brian Hesson, a senior at Caldwell High in Elba, Ohio, was third here 12 months ago and third last week in Kenosha at 15:48.67.

Josh Ritchie, a senior from Walsh Jesuit High in Tallmadge, Ohio, placed eighth in the nationals a year ago, but this time managed only the next-to-last qualifying place from his region, crossing at 15:53.76.

Greg Jimmerson from Stevens High in Rapid City, S.D., ran past them all in Kenosha to win in 15:43.05.

Another returner is Brendan Heffernan from North Hunterdon High in Glen Gardner, N.J. He placed 10th here last December and catapulted into the spotlight this year by winning the Northeast Regional in the Bronx, N.Y., in 15:41.72.

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Perhaps the biggest surprise came in the Western Regional where two identical twins finished 1-2. Theo Martin of Page (Ariz.) High paced the field in 14:57 and beat his slightly older brother, Tim, by three seconds.

The Navajo brothers grew up running with their father, Allen, and mother, Lisa, on a reservation near Lake Powell.

“Running is a cultural thing with the Navajo people,” Allen said. “My grandpa told me to run when I was a little boy. He said to run every day, first early in the morning at twilight, then again in the afternoon, and that it would help gather your soul and mind together. Running would form your identity as an individual.

“He told me if I didn’t run I would probably end up in a border town, drunk and with nowhere to go.”

The concept of running to build character threads through all Indian cultures and gave Billy Mills reason to begin the sport while growing up orphaned on the Lakota Sioux Reservation.

Mills went on to win the gold medal in the 10,000 meters in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He remains the only American ever to win an Olympic 10,000 meters and is the spokesman for this year’s Kinney race. He met the Martins a month ago in Page.

Mills said there is virtually no comparison between himself as a teen-ager and the Martins.

“Theo Martin and Tim Martin are so far ahead of where I was at their age,” Mills said. “They already know their identities. I didn’t find mine until two weeks before the Olympics--and that’s why I won the gold medal.”

When he had his own family, Allen Martin made running a tradition.

“I didn’t just tell hem to go out and run, I did it with them,” he said. “That was the best part of raising them. Just being out there free in the wide open space on the reservation.”

Quickly though, Theo and Tim became quite fast, and by sixth grade they made their middle school cross-country team. Theo won every race except one that year, routinely beating eighth-graders, and Tim was right behind his brother every time. The next two years, Theo and Tim placed first and second in all their races.

Last week in the Western Regionals, the twins were running about 20th over the first two miles. With just over a mile to go, another runner quickened the pace.

“My brother and I just followed him,” Theo said. “And everybody else just died.”