Lisa Rainsberger stood in the mud at the 1K mark of the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) high school championships in Portland, Ore., last month, waiting for her daughter, Katie, a freshman. She was in 15th place after the half mile.
But even at 5’8”, Katie, from Colorado Springs, could not be picked out among the leaders at the 1K point. “I’m waiting… waiting…” says Lisa, recalling the moment. She counted bodies: 20… 25… Katie finally appeared in 40th.
Freshman mistake? Did Katie go out too hard and die? Run out of gas after a long season? How do you lose at least 25 places in the snap of a finger?
At Portland Meadows, the site of NXN, it can happen. Just before the 1K, Katie was clipped from behind. She tripped and went down — a “Superman,” as her mother would call it — into the mud.
This was not a typical race or a typical field. And it was certainly not a typical cross-country course. The fields of 199 boys and 199 girls ran 5,000 meters on the muddiest course most people had ever seen — a course that sucked your legs, drained your energy and left mud in your mouth, ears and eyes, coating your body and giving you the look of a pre-historic creature emerging from a cave.
Well, cross-country does go back a long time. And it does have the primitive, uncivil qualities many of us like to see in our cross country. But this? Who knows how many athletes — dozens for sure — went splat in the mud.
One might think Rainsberger had no business being an early pacesetter in the first place. She was only a freshman, training 25 miles a week, dipping her toes in the water, as it were, so what was she doing in the top 15 as the pack approached the first kilometer?
First Boston Marathon? Here‘s What to Know.
The freshman had gotten off the line well, plowed through the standing water on the opening straight and merged with the leaders onto a narrow pathway. Portland Meadows is a horse racing track, although the cross-country layout was contained on the infield and routed around a meager golf course, with two sets of hay bales thrown in as well as a section of man-made hills — roller coaster “whoop-de-dos” that the field would tour twice.
To state the obvious: The course, in use since the first NXN in 2004, did not drain well. The Oregon rains make a mess of it almost every year. While the weather kept meet officials up at night (literally, working on the course), the athletes, mud baths and all, seemed to enjoy it. Some athletes even felt well suited to it.
“I think the mud brings out the tough runners, the ones who are able to push through the tough conditions in your favor,” says Katie, who attends Air Academy, situated on the grounds of the Air Force Academy, at an altitude of 6,035 feet.
Katie is tall like her mom. She has dexterity from years of soccer, which has molded her into a complete athlete. Lisa Rainsberger — does the name ring a bell? — says that Katie acquired speed, agility, great lateral movement, and muscle development on the soccer field. “Tiny hips, big quads,” says Lisa. “She can’t find pants to wear.”
A fitting outfit was the last thing on any athlete’s mind at Portland Meadows, where, before long, every uniform looked the same, blending into the color of coffee.
After her tumble, Katie was not hurt. She was not even dazed. “I’ve learned how to fall from soccer,” she says. Katie had been a soccer baby practically since coming out of diapers. She played forward on her club team and was named MVP of last fall’s 2012 State Cup tournament, held the day after the state cross-country meet in late October.
That was some weekend for the freshman. On a slow 5K course in her backyard in Colorado Springs, Rainsberger led the state girls’ 4A race in the last half mile after trading the lead with Niwot junior Elise Cranny. As the two girls came within view of the finish, the crowd erupted, but not to hail Rainsberger. There were a reported 10,000 spectators at the race course that day, and it sounded like almost all of them screamed when they saw the drama unfolding: Cranny flying after Rainsberger and looking like she might catch her. She did, and snapping the tape, where the two girls seemed to brush elbows in spent relief, it was Cranny the winner in 18:41.3 and Rainsberger second in 18:41.4.
“I had no idea she was coming,” says Rainsberger. “Hats off to Elise for coming back.”
In Portland, it was Katie’s turn to mount a comeback. A fall in the mud was like a day at the office for her. In the past two years, she’d broken her wrists in soccer three times (two right, one left), twice the result of bad falls, once going after a ball in a stint as goalie. “You just bubble wrap your cast and continue playing,” she says.
Or continue picking off people in a cross-country race. The next time Lisa saw her daughter at Portland Meadows she’d moved up to 28th. Then 18th. One runner at a time. Power through the rivers of mud, finesse the hay bales, and scoot up and over the whoop-de-dos. Use those soccer muscles: arms, shoulders, nimble hips, quads that don’t fit into proper pants.
Was Rainsberger’s athleticism an asset in the brutal conditions? “Definitely,” she says. “You could see that the very thin girls looked so fragile in the mud. Your body had to take constant slipping and elbowing. Afterwards, my ankles were sore from slipping.”
Rainsberger crossed the finish in 13th. She was the first freshman in the field. It was not only a strong physique that put her up there but maturity and toughness too. “Katie will not give in to discomfort,” says Steve Rischling, one of Air Academy’s two head coaches, along with Glenn Peterson. “She gets to that ‘dark’ place like her mom always did, and she’s willing to go there.”
Darkness: a good term for the place where every champion must go to, and get past, where Lisa Rainsberger went to many times in her prime in the 1980s as Lisa Larsen Weidenbach, one of America’s leading female marathoners. Rainsberger is the last American woman to win the Boston Marathon, in 1985, and was two-time Chicago Marathon winner in 1988 and ’89. She also won marathons from Minneapolis to Montreal to Sapporo but is equally known for near-miss fourth-place finishes in both the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Marathon Trials. Rainsberger had started out in sports as a swimming prodigy and after her marathon career became a top triathlete and then a coach.
Now 51, Rainsberger coaches kids as young as 7 in a Landsharks youth cross-country program as well as adult runners and multi-sport athletes on a professional basis. She is wise enough to know that when it comes to 14-year-old Katie, less is more in just about everything: training volume, parental pushing, competitive urgency. “We’re a family of balance,” she says.
Lisa married Bud Rainsberger in 1995. Together they had Katie and, three years later, a boy, Ian. Katie started running in seventh grade. It was her decision. She won her first race, a 1.6-mile cross-country event. Before long, she came home from school one day and told Lisa, “Y’know, Mom, you always told me to find my own passion and not fall into your shadow.” (Pause.) “But I really want to be a runner.”
How to Increase Mileage Running.
Today, at 14, Katie’s answer might be the same. While continuing club soccer last fall, Katie won all of her invitational cross-country meets, many by big margins, except for the mid-season Titan Invitational, in which she faced the state’s two top runners to that point, 2011 NXN Southwest champion Erin Hooker of Fort Collins, and the girl who would win the 2012 state 5A title, Heather Bates of Pine Creek. Hooker won the 5K race in 17:37. Bates took second in 17:53 with Rainsberger third in 18:06.
“Katie showed her character in that race,” says Rischling, in his 30th year of coaching. “You wondered how she would deal with not being in the lead for the first time.” Rainsberger also impressed Rischling with her leadership, almost unheard of for a freshman, no matter what the performance level. “Katie was definitely not a wallflower on the team,” says Rischling, “and other girls looked to her.” Rainsberger had tested her take-charge personality in middle school. As her mom explained it, “In seventh grade, Katie walked the halls asking every girl who looked athletic, ‘Hey, are you going out for cross country? I think you should.’”
This freshman is clearly team captain material. But for now she’ll have all she can handle in her upcoming spring season. After a winter of maintenance running, swimming and rock climbing, Rainsberger will try to break 5 minutes in the mile while continuing her soccer with the school team, the Air Academy Kadets.
Soccer and running are often in conflict, but with cooperating coaches who both want to keep Katie’s schedule manageable, she is able to blend the two endeavors into an ideal training regimen. After all, mom’s rule is, “You’re a freshman, work on your speed.”
Marathon Pace Charts for Fine-Tuning Training.
A Part of Hearst Digital Media.
Marc Bloom’s high school cross-country rankings have played an influential role in the sport for more than 20 years and led to the creation of many major events, including Nike Cross Nationals and the Great American Cross Country Festival. He published his cross-country journal, Harrier, for more than two decades.
