Finish line
Track and field: Canyon High School graduate retires after decorated distance-running career
Canyon High graduate Lauren Fleshman has retired from professional racing, according to a post Friday on Fleshman’s blog and a nytimes.com article.
Decorated on the high school, collegiate and professional levels of long-distance running, Fleshman leaves behind a career that was both groundbreaking and heartbreaking.
She won CIF state titles in track and cross country. She won five NCAA championships at Stanford University. She won two USA Track and Field championships as a pro.
Injuries, however, kept her from ever making an Olympic team.
An article on nytimes.com Friday described Fleshman, 34, as “most likely being the best American distance runner never to make an Olympic team.”
According to the article, foot
problems held her back in 2004 and 2008.
A left knee injury limited her training before the 2012 trials, and an Achilles injury wiped out this year’s trials.
She still leaves a sterling legacy.
As a prep star in the late 1990s, she won CIF-Southern Section and state titles in cross country and track.
SCV distance running has grown tremendously since then, and some would credit her for paving the way.
Maybe her greatest high school accomplishment, and possibly the greatest in Southern Section track and field history, came in 1999, her senior year.
She won the 800-meter run, the 1,600 and the 3,200 at the CIF-SS Division 2 finals in front of around 3,000 fans at Cerritos College in Norwalk.
Then, according to a Los Angeles Times article, she went to the prom.
“She’s a phenomenal person,” says longtime Canyon track and cross country coach Dave DeLong, who coached Fleshman for four years. “When she graduated, I (asked), ‘Did I grow more from coaching her or did she grow more from me coaching her, because she is beyond her years, wisdom, and intelligence.
“I was a better person for having coached her.”
Fleshman was a 15-time All-American at Stanford.
She won USA Championships in the 5,000 meters in 2006 and 2010.
“I know it is ‘just running,’” Fleshman wrote on her blog, “and there’s a big world out there, but knowing that doesn’t diminish the value this sport and the people in it have brought to my life.
“If you have been a part of my running career and are reading this, I want to say the most sincere, heart felt thank you that is humanly possible without the option to stand face to face and look you in the eye. Let’s do that looking in the eye part soon though. Seriously, thank you.”
Fleshman wrote that while she is retiring, she will still be involved in her sport, “building community among women runners, making sure there is fairness and economic viability for athletes, fighting to protect clean athletes and more.”