Running Women

It wasn't so much that she made us look like slugs. Polly Plumer, everyone knew, was tremendously talented. We, the majority of runners who ran against her, were not. That much we could handle. Same with her looks. She was gorgeous--the homecoming queen of University High. Newspapers waxed poetic over her beauty. Boys, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, followed her everywhere, fighting over the chance just to carry her spikes. Even our own teammates. Did it bother us? A little.

LONDON — There was such hope for the U.S. archers, especially after the men's team opened play with a silver medal. But things dissolved fast as their best hope for an individual medal — Brady Ellison — lost in the round of 16 to Taylor Worth of Australia, 112-106. Ellison was on a roll entering the Games. He won his last eight World Cup events and finished third in last year's world championship. Jacob Wukie and Jake Kaminski both went out in the round of 32. The remaining U.S. hope is on the women's side, where Khatuna Lorig has advanced to the round of eight.

After Kay Nekota of Woodbridge High School crosses the finish line at Saturday's state cross-country meet at Woodward Park in Fresno, she will have a big chocolate bar waiting for her. Nekota, a freshman, had sworn off sweets and desserts of all kinds since summer, and Susan Nekota has decided to reward her daughter for her efforts. "Kay doesn't have the Mary Decker Slaney real light, slim build," Susan said.

Designers have their work cut out for them for the spring 2010 season. Which is why they're laying on the charm -- love songs on the soundtrack and cutesy play suits on the runway, along with one-piece swimsuits that bring to mind classic pinups, even a majorette or two. (Well, sort of. At Alexander Wang, tinsel mini-dresses mixed it up with sportswear inspired by vintage football uniforms). So far, it's working. The collections are off to a strong start, with lots of upbeat (optimism is the new black!

The comparison is a logical one to make. Everyone who has seen freshman Heather Garritson run this season has been reminded of her older sister, Carrie. Carrie Garritson left the high school scene as the first to earn four trips to the Foot Locker National Championships. Three short months after Carrie graduated from Buena Park and left for Alabama, Heather stepped into the spotlight her sister had run so many miles in.

Nadezhda Ilyina won a 26-mile, 355-or-so-yard race in Los Angeles on Sunday. A few minutes later, Lornah Kiplagat learned she had won the 12th running of the Los Angeles Marathon. In a bizarre ending to a day of bizarrerie, Ilyina of Russia cut a corner in the race's 22nd mile, saved about 30 yards, but was cut out of the finishing field after being the apparent winner.

It certainly wasn't the most romantic proposal, but Brian Appell simply had to ask. "Olga, dear," Appell, an exercise physiology buff, said to his wife early one morning. "May I take your pulse?" One minute--and 38 heartbeats later--Brian Appell had his answer: His wife was born to run. Never mind that she had no athletic background. Her slow heart rate, Brian figured, signaled potential success. That was five years ago.

What started with a bouquet of congratulatory balloons had, within a few days, turned into a sea of flowers for Kim Mortensen of Thousand Oaks High. Mortensen, a senior, last Saturday became the first runner from the region to win the girls' title in the Foot Locker national cross-country championships. Since then, she has been overwhelmed. "I don't want to say it looks like a funeral," Mortensen said of her home in Thousand Oaks, "but there are flowers everywhere. . . .

Unlike many world-class athletes, Joan Hansen has never felt the need to commit seemingly endless years of her life in pursuit of glory. Train rigorously for years without a break? No way. Get psyched for races years in advance? Not hardly. Instead, Hansen, 31, and a 1984 Olympian, seems to reach her athletic potential in spurts. Intentionally. "I don't have that kind of personality where I say, 'Oh my God, I've got to get out and train!' " Hansen said.

Twenty-mile runs, 100-mile weeks, the blast-past-everyone pace . . . . Kathleen Smith stopped in mid-description of her recent marathon training program and nearly laughed out loud. "Twenty-milers, three (Sundays) in a row," Smith said. "Can you believe that? Isn't that stupid?" To those who tend to run on the conservative side, it might well be.

Even if the women sprinters here for track and field's world championships have tried to put Marion Jones out of their minds, it's not possible. Jones, out of competition because of the birth of a son in June, is serving here as a television commentator and was interviewed at one point Sunday on the Stade de France scoreboard screen. "The ladies are the show, obviously," she said of the 100-meter final scheduled for later in the evening, "and I can't wait to see them in a few hours."

That collective sigh of relief heard around women's college basketball in June came when Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams graduated and took their acts to the WNBA. Connecticut's quintessential quartet, along with second-team All-American guard Diana Taurasi, stormed through last season to a 39-0 record and the Huskies' third national championship. Taurasi, a junior, is the sole returning starter.

In the mornings, Marry Nabard Aaeen sits in a dim room with fellow female reporters, separated from the male journalists of the government-run Bakhtar news agency by a heavy curtain and a closed door. She's relegated to "women's articles" on health, food, culture and children. In the afternoons, Aaeen sits in a different room with other female reporters, but she's in charge.

How good was Amber Steen's cross-country season? Even the worst race for the Newport Harbor senior turned out better than last year's. Steen smashed her previous best time on every course she tried this season, from the hilly Mt. San Antonio College layout to the speedy track at Woodward Park in Fresno. She defended her Southern Section Division II title with room to spare, and finished 33 seconds faster than she did at the 1999 state finals, despite running in 45-degree weather.

The Fountain Valley girls' cross-country team earned a spot at the starting line for Saturday's state finals the hard way. The Barons were awarded one of six Division I at-large bids into the field of 25 at Woodward Park in Fresno, joining Esperanza and four other Southern Section teams that met a predetermined race time at the section finals Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College.

Natalie Stein of North Hollywood High, who single-handedly earned some respect for City Section girls' cross-country three years ago, will be heavily favored to win her second individual title when the section championships are held today at Pierce College. The meet starts at 8 a.m. with the girls' freshman-sophomore race. The girls' varsity race will be held at 9, followed by the boys' at 9:30.

As if running 50 miles isn't daunting enough, try starting the race in darkness, when runners use flashlights to illuminate the trail, which is overgrown with chaparral and brambles. That's what the field of 39 runners faced in October at the San Juan Trail 50-Mile Race. "The conditions for that race are considered pretty tough," said Scott McKenzie, who finished the race first, in 8 hours 3 minutes. "There's a lot of ascending and descending, somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 feet.

Nadia Prasad, born in France and raised in New Caledonia, was training for her beloved Paris Marathon when she came to Los Angeles to watch her husband, Binesh, run in 1992. Mark Plaatjes, then the elite athlete coordinator, dragooned her into running half of the Los Angeles Marathon as part of her training. As she ran she felt poorly and didn't know why. It was a relief when the 13-mile mark came.

Karate and cross-country might appear to be vastly different sports, but senior Laura Jakosky of Agoura High says her training in the former has helped her excel in the latter. Jakosky, favored to win her second consecutive girls' title in the Ventura County cross-country championships at Lake Casitas on Monday, took up karate at the age of 8 and earned a first-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do by the time she was 13. "Mentally, they're very similar," Jakosky said.

Senior Anita Siraki of Glendale Hoover High didn't just break the girls' course record in the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational cross-country meet in Walnut on Saturday. She annihilated it. In a performance that left Siraki, her coach and numerous spectators shaking their heads in disbelief, Siraki clocked 16 minutes 38 seconds over the 2.95-mile layout to better the previous course mark of 16:55 set by Julia Stamps of Santa Rosa in 1995.