She's making every beat count

Leeann Eble's goals haven't changed despite an irregular heartbeat.

By JOHN C. COTEY, High Schools Columnist
Published September 20, 2007

DADE CITY - She ran as fast as she could Saturday morning, crunching dried leaves beneath thumping shoes and stirring up a dusty trail as she sped toward the finish line in Land O'Lakes.

Her heart, it beat steady. Her face, it never lost color. Her dad, he analyzed and worried, yelling out to her, asking if she was doing okay and she was.

Her legs, they never stopped churning. A good start.

Almost a year to the day that Leeann Eble collapsed at a race for the first time, the Pasco junior finished second to open the season.

It wasn't her best time, and was far from her best race, but few have ever been so satisfying.

"Sometimes," she said, "finishing is what counts."

Since collapsing last year at Lecanto, her head spinning and her heart racing, Eble said her sophomore year was a free fall.

While other runners see a dirt trail, Eble sees a mountain.

"I want to get back to the top again," she says.

Doctors tell her she has an irregular heartbeat, and they tried a procedure to fix that and could not. On occasion, an extra beat pumps, and probably will for the rest of her life. It is not life-threatening, they tell her.

She smiles and sways back and forth, having just completed a brisk run with the boys team at Pasco. She feels great.

Know this: She is not afraid.

"I just pretend that was a one-time thing," she says.

Bill Eble, her father, worries, not as much as he once did but still just a little. He has seen his daughter collapse, first at Lecanto, then at the state meet. He believes the doctors, inasmuch as any father who has read too many sad stories could.

But if running is the cause, truth be told he would rather she walk.

"You ought to stop doing this," he told her last year. "Why don't you take up golf?"

Leeann laughs at the memory, because of another one: When she was 4, Bill tried to teach her how to swing a club and she accidentally whacked her little sister Katlyn right in the head.

Maybe not golf, then.

Before Bill could fit her for clubs, doctors fitted her for a heart monitor. What they found was that an extra beat should be carefully watched, but not keep her from competing. They told her to be careful, to monitor it, to come back every six months. They told her to have fun, and Eble ran right to the nearest soccer field.

Four games into the season, she broke her leg. By the time the cast came off, soccer season was over, and track season was beginning, and when Eble tried to run fast, she couldn't.

She needed something the doctors couldn't give her - time. She ran at the conference meet and finished so far behind the leaders you didn't even know she was there.

So she kept running, into the summer, 6, 7 miles here and there, hoping to find her old form.

"Coming into this year, I think she was a little scared," her dad says.

Saturday, she ran 3 miles in 20 minutes, 42 seconds, and regained a little bit of her confidence.

She was faster than any other runner in Pasco County and knows she can get faster. She thinks she can win a third straight conference title, and a third straight district championship.

"I feel like last year I lost everything I had gained and just went downhill," she said. "It's going to take a while to climb back up. I'm still climbing. But I will get there."

A new beginning, she says, in search of old results.

And a journey back to the top of the mountain.

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 21:06:24]