Cross Country Running

The U.S. Embassy said it has been alerted to a possible terrorist attack against this month's international cross-country championships in Kenya. The IAAF World Cross Country Championships are scheduled for March 24 in the coastal city of Mombasa. Athletes from 66 countries are expected to compete in the races, which are being held in Kenya for the first time. The embassy said it also had heard of threats by Kenya's coastal Muslim community to disrupt the races through unspecified means.

The death of 14-year-old cross-country runner Megan Myers after a three-mile race stunned Dana Hills High School, as students and parents tried Thursday to comprehend the loss of an athlete with so much life yet to live. "She was the greatest kid, very bright and full of life," said Terry Tutton, a longtime friend of Myers and her family. "She had always been a runner and very athletic."

A high school freshman who collapsed during a 3-mile cross-country race in September died from an inflammation of the heart, the Orange County coroner's office said Monday. Megan Myers, 14, died from multifocal myocarditis, said Cullen Ellingburgh, supervising deputy for the county coroner. An autopsy performed the day after Megan's death was unable to determine the cause. Dr.

The Southland cross-country season began in earnest this weekend, giving runners a chance to measure the results of their summer training. Most ran hundreds of miles since school ended in June. A few traveled much farther. Crystal Reed, a junior at Fountain Valley, surpassed the 1,000-mile mark late last month, averaging more than 100 miles a week. She wasn't alone in piling up the miles. Teammate Danielle Dabney, a senior, amassed nearly 1,000 miles during the 13-week period from June 1 to Aug.

Alma Escobar still feels the stares when she strides away from the starting line, almost as though she's the lone participant in a race. But eyes no longer train on Escobar solely for her diminutive frame. Escobar, a junior cross-country runner at Corona, is gaining more attention for the way she dwarfs the competition. "She has a Cadillac engine in a Volkswagen body," said Don Chadez, the athletic director at Corona and a former track and cross-country coach for 26 years.

To be a member of one of the state's best boys' cross-country teams, one must adhere to Chino Don Lugo Coach Don Salyers' formula of pack running, or staying together as a group as long as possible to maximize point potential. It often means sacrificing individual honors to meet the team's goal. "Ninety percent of the time," Salyers says, "the team that has the individual champion doesn't win the team championship." Senior Fitsum Tesfa, however, is usually the leader of the pack.

Bill Tokar, the girls' cross-country coach at Ventura High, isn't the kind to rest on accomplishments. There is always the next practice, the next meet. So when it comes to appreciating the Cougars' record-breaking performance last week at the CIF Southern Section cross-country finals, this is the wrong week to look back in admiration. You can't look back when the state championships are Saturday at Fresno's Woodward Park.

With Christmas being the time for giving, Bennett Duval of Los Angeles Loyola offered his fellow students one of the best presents of all last month with the sacrifice he made for the cross-country team. Duval was a 6-foot-3, 160-pound sophomore volleyball player who went out for cross-country simply to get into shape. For two weeks in August, while training with the team in Mammoth, he finished last among the 18 runners every time, causing him to ask, "Why am I doing this?" Fast forward to Nov.

John Mahr is facing a problem entering his ninth season as the cross-country coach at Hesperia Sultana. He thinks his girls' team is talented enough to win the mythical national title this year, but he doesn't want it to become obsessed with reaching that goal. "[The girls] know the writing is on the wall," Mahr said. "They know that most of them ran big [personal-record times] during track season and that they're in better shape now than they were a year ago....

Mark Matusak of Los Angeles Loyola entered the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational cross-country meet wondering whether he could beat Mohamed Trafeh of Duarte. He left it knowing that he could. Matusak, a junior, posted a time of 14 minutes 33 seconds to defeat second-place Trafeh by five seconds and beat third-place finisher Troy Swier of Imperial Beach Mar Vista by 20 seconds in the boys' individual sweepstakes race Saturday at Mt. SAC.