Fast Track

Lauren Fleshman of Canyon High capped a superb senior season by winning the girls’ 3,200 meters in a time of 10:18.81, fastest in the nation this year, in the state trackand field championships at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento on June 5.

That performance might not have occurred, however, were it not for a stirring effort in the Woodbridge Invitational cross-country meet last September.

Fleshman, The Times’ Valley / Ventura County girls’ track and field athlete of the year, was regarded as one of the top returning runners in the nation when she began her senior year.

But it wasn’t until she set a three-mile course record of 16:35 at Woodbridge High in Irvine that she began to envision herself as an elite track athlete.

“Our school has such a great background in cross-country that I always enjoyed that more,” Fleshman said. “Being on a state [Division I] championship [cross-country] team my freshman year was so much fun and I always enjoyed the cross-country training more. . . .

“But when I came through two miles in 11 minutes [at Woodbridge], which was only 22 seconds off my best, and basically maintained that pace for the last mile, I started to wonder how fast I could run in the 3,200.”

Fleshman, who has committed to Stanford, won Southern Section and state Division I titles and finished second in the West region and national championships in the final month of cross-country season.

But her improved attitude toward track wasn’t complete until she stopped viewing interval training with disdain.

“I asked myself, ‘Why am I wasting all my time fighting [intervals]?’ ” Fleshman said. “Instead of regarding them as a chore, why not view them as something that was going to take me to where I wanted to go.”

With that in mind, Fleshman posted a school-record and nation-leading time of 10:21.36 in winning the 3,200 in the Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High on April 10.

She took over the national lead in the 1,500 three weeks later when her school record of 4:27.73 placed her second in the women’s open race of the Steve Scott Invitational at UC Irvine and moved her to fifth on the all-time region list.

She became the first girl to win the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 in the Southern Section championships when she took the Division II 800 in a school-record 2:11.05, the 1,600 in 5:00.30 and the 3,200 in 10:55.69 at Cerritos College on May 22.

She won the 3,200 in 10:33.58 in the Southern Section Masters Meet at Cerritos six days later and followed that with her 10:18.81 clocking in the state championships that ranks her fifth on the all-time region list.

She also left defending champion Sara Bei of Santa Rosa Montgomery more than 12 seconds behind in second.

Several state champions competed in either the Foot Locker national outdoor championships at North Carolina State or the Golden West Invitational at American River College in Sacramento last weekend, but not Fleshman.

“I wanted to be totally focused on [the state championships],” she said of her decision not to run in postseason meets. “I didn’t want to be worrying about my plane reservations or who I was going to be running against the next week.”

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ALL-REGION GIRLS’ TRACK AND FIELD TEAMS, PAGE 13