Allen Was Free to Dominate

Ask Julie Allen of Corona del Mar High what races she values most from the 2001 cross-country season and her answer will have little to do with victories posted, school records set or honors won.

The races she takes the most satisfaction in, the Stanford Invitational on Sept. 29 and the West region championships at Mt. San Antonio College on Dec. 1, are the two in which she felt the most “free.”

The two in which her main focus was not on who she was running against, but on pushing herself to the limit over a 5,000-meter or three-mile course.

“I was just going out there and running free,” Allen said. “I was really relaxed and ready to go. I was confident and focused on my race and not worrying about what other people were doing.”

Allen, a senior who placed third in the 3,200 meters in the state track and field championships in June, won the sweepstakes race of the Orange County championships and the Division III final of the Southern Section championships this season. But Stanford and the West regionals were two defining meets for her, cementing her selection as The Times’ girls’ runner of the year.

Her victory in the Division III race at Stanford came against a field that included highly-regarded Jenna Timinsky of Encinitas San Dieguito Academy and put her on a level at which she had never been.

Her third-place finish in the West regional earned her a trip to the national championships in Orlando, Fla., where her 11th-place effort in the 32-runner field made her a third-team All-American.

Senior Emily Vince of Palos Verdes Peninsula had posted substantially faster times than Allen in the Southern Section and state championships while running at the Division I level. But when Allen finished 12 places--and 34 seconds--ahead of an illness-hampered Vince in the West region championships, the contest for the honor was over.

Allen’s third-place finish in that meet surprised some because she had posted only the 10th-fastest overall time in the state championships at Woodward Park in Fresno the previous week. But the gregarious straight-A student said she was confident of a top-five finish in the meet in which the top eight finishers advanced to the national championships.

“For some reason, I didn’t go after [eventual winner Timinsky] in the final mile [of the state meet],” she said at the West regional. “Today, I just wanted to push it. Even if that meant it might cost me some places at the end of the race. I just wanted to do justice to the race.”