Flanagan: Conquering the Nightmare

by Marc Bloom

Last November, Shalane Flanagan of Marblehead, Mass., the leading girls high school distance runner in the United States, collapsed and failed to finish a championship cross-country race at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, calling it "my worst nightmare."

On Saturday, Flanagan returns to New York in the midst of fulfilling a dream that will soon pit her against the world's best young runners.

Flanagan, an 18-year-old senior at Marblehead High, is favored in the girls mile at the 17th annual National Scholastic Indoor Championships this weekend, to be held for the first time at the Armory Track Center in Washington Heights. The meet was moved from Boston to Manhattan to take advantage of the Armory's fast track, a banked, 200-meter Mondo surface which has produced a spate of records this season.

Athletes from coast to coast will compete and Flanagan's chief opposition is expected from Sara Bei of Montgomery High in Santa Rosa, Calif. Bei, a junior and three-time state cross-country champion, last spring ran the mile outdoors in 4 minutes 47 seconds, third fastest in the country for high school girls in 1999.

Flanagan, who has signed with the University of North Carolina, won the girls high school mile at the Air Force Millrose Games February 4 in Madison Square Garden. Her time was 4:54.84, fastest girls indoor time this season.

At Millrose, Flanagan toyed with the field and won by 60 meters on the slow Garden track. This is her first winter of indoor track since giving up competitive swimming. At the Armory, if Flanagan lets loose, the girls national record of 4:39.5 set in 1972 could be in jeopardy. But she is looking past the mile to the World Cross Country Championships, March 18-19, in Villamoura, Portugal. Flanagan will run the junior women's race of 6,000 meters (3.75 miles) for runners 19 and under.

"I've been training primarily for the worlds," said Flanagan, whose workouts total about 40 miles a week. "I'm excited about running against the Africans."

Runners from Kenya and Ethiopia dominate the world meet, and no American woman has ever won a junior title. Flanagan hesitates rating herself a contender. But her victory in the recent U.S. world trials race demonstrated her startling resurgence since last fall, when she set a blistering pace at the Foot Locker cross-country northeast championship, only to wither on the homestretch with the finish in sight.

"At first," said Flanagan, "I was devastated. But the disappointment made me a stronger athlete, and encouraged me to work harder. Now, when I do win, it feels that much sweeter."

In the U.S. trial for the world team, February 13 in Greensboro, N.C., Flanagan turned in a virtuoso performance, defeating heralded Stanford freshmen Erin Sullivan and Lauren Fleshman in a cold, hard rain. Flanagan thrives on adverse conditions and welcomes a sloppy course the way another New Englander, three-time world cross-country champion Lynn Jennings, always has.

"I'm used to bad weather," said Flanagan. "I think the mud played into my favor."

When Flanagan, feeling fresh, pulled even with Sullivan in the last quarter-mile, Flanagan was stunned. "What am I doing? I can't pass her ," Flanagan told herself. Sullivan, a two-time Foot Locker national titlist, placed seventh (while Fleshman was fourth) in last fall's National Collegiate Athletic Association cross-country meet. Flanagan, who thought she'd be "one of the scraps" in a race filled with top college freshmen, charged ahead to win by 15 meters in 22:10 for 6,000 meters.

The key to Flanagan's win was the rare chance to measure her pace against others. At Marblehead High, no one on the team can keep up with her training tempo, and in most of her meets Flanagan triumphs by more than a football field. "I'm used to getting out front and never looking back," said Flanagan. "I've never run a race in a close group like in Greensboro."

Flanagan's solo efforts proved her undoing in her Van Cortlandt collapse last fall. She surged ahead as if by herself in the Lynn Woods back home. "I ran so hard that I beat myself into the ground," she said. "I'm learning to calm down."

Another reason for her isolation is that Flanagan, the daughter of two former world-class runners, coaches herself. Her mother is Cheryl Bridges Twelorgy, a one-time women's world recordholder in the marathon, and her father is Steve Flanagan, a former 10,000-meter runner. Her parents, who are divorced, competed on eight U.S. world cross-country teams between them.

"Shalane picks up pointers from us," said Twelorgy, "but she creates her own training program. The high school coach allows her to do her own thing. Shalane's getting to know herself better. She has good 'ball sense.'"

Shalane agreed that she could trust her instincts in how she trained. "I go with whatever my body needs to do," she said.

Flanagan will face her steepest competition by far in the world meet, considered a stepping stone to Olympic promise. "The Kenyans like it fast and furious," said Twelorgy. Flanagan's no wallflower when it comes to a fast pace, but if she can just keep calm she could run the race of her dreams.

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