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Running nowhere gets her a long way

Lisa Valentine's treadmill workouts have her aiming for an Olympic berth.

By JOHN SCHWARB, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 19, 2002

More often than not, Lisa Valentine's training sessions get her nowhere. But make no mistake. She has traveled quite far in just a few years. The Tierra Verde resident, in just five years of competitive running, has progressed from a 5K to the U.S. Olympic trials marathon. Sunday, she will run in the Florida Gulf Beaches Marathon.

For Valentine, the marathon will be her first since the 2000 Boston Marathon. She has taken time off to nurse injured hamstrings and work back up to regular training schedules.

But what's a 21-month layoff to someone who never thought about any kind of running until age 35?

"At my age, you just take what you can get," said Valentine, 40. "I'll putz along at my 6:50 (minutes per mile) pace, hopefully for 26 miles. We're just looking for a nice, hard run."

She brushes off any thoughts about being the favorite Sunday, though there appears to be no other top area contenders.

Clearwater's Judy Maguire, the winner at the first Gulf Beaches in 2000, might run in the marathon relay but not the main event. Tampa's Christy Phillips, Valentine's club training partner, will run with Valentine for part of the race but is not entered.

A win might surprise her, but she no longer will catch anyone else napping. In just her third marathon, in December 1999 in Tucson, Ariz., she won in 2 hours, 47 minutes, 44 seconds.

That earned her a spot in the 2000 Olympic trials marathon, where she was seeded No.122 out of 210 but finished 75th.

In addition, she broke three hours in her first marathon, running 2:59:22 at the 1998 Disney while pregnant with her fifth child. (Valentine didn't know it at the time and stopped running three weeks later until her daughter, Rachel, was born.)

"It's very unusual for a person to break three hours in a first marathon in the first place," said Joe Burgasser, Valentine's coach with the Forerunners Club team. "When you see that you say, "Whoa, somebody has some talent and some willingness to work."'

Burgasser actually caught his first glimpse a year earlier, at the St. Petersburg Bay to Bay 7.5-mile race. His Forerunners swept the top six spots, but Valentine was not far behind in 11th.

Valentine talked to Burgasser after the race and expressed an interest in joining the team. The coach asked what sort of training she had been working on.

"She said, "Well, all I do now is my stair-climber,"' Burgasser said. "I thought, "She trains on a stair-climber and finishes 11th? I knew right away that Lisa was certainly above the norm."

As a disciplined, cerebral runner who likes to set and stick to a pace, Valentine took a fast liking to marathons. In her first crack at the Boston Marathon in 1999, her 2:51:40 was the seventh-fastest by an American woman and 25th overall out of 3,767 women.

"It's easy to get into a zone," Valentine said. "The more marathons you do, the smarter you get."

The Olympic trials were as far from her mind as the finish line at her first marathon. But after her first two efforts, the trials-qualifying time of 2:50 appeared well within reach.

She and Phillips traveled to the Tucson Marathon with that goal in mind, and the dry conditions suited Valentine, a San Diego native, perfectly.

Now the goal is to return to the trials in 2004, when Valentine will be 42. The qualifying time has been lowered by two minutes to 2:48, but that should still be within target.

For now, her road to the trials is largely indoors -- on a treadmill. With five children from 3 to 15, the former flight attendant cannot afford to put in her 70 to 80 miles per week on the roads. So she just starts and finishes her workouts without leaving home.

"If I didn't have my treadmill, I wouldn't get my runs in. I won't leave my kids alone," Valentine said. "A lot of people hate the treadmill. They say you're not a real runner. There were snickers at the trials when Christine Clark said she used a treadmill."

Clark of Anchorage, Alaska, only won the race.

Valentine, still relatively young in terms of experience, might just win a few more races before she puts away the treadmill for good.

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