Running Start

Running a marathon was always in the back of Peter De La Cerda’s mind, and that’s where it stayed for several years.

He wanted no part of the grueling training, muscle cramps and painful blisters that come with pounding the pavement for 26.2 miles.

“The whole thing about running a marathon intimidated me,” he said.

So how come De La Cerda can’t wait to toe the starting line for the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday? He said he had a change of heart a few years ago when he realized he would probably never fulfill his dream of making the U.S. Olympic team as a 10,000-meter runner.

Since his first marathon in 1999, De La Cerda, 30, has established himself as one of America’s best hopes for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, after narrowly failing to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Games.

“If he stays healthy and he stays motivated, he should make [the Olympic team],” said Joe Vigil, De La Cerda’s coach at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. “His chances are as good as anyone’s.”

De La Cerda’s entry in the L.A. Marathon is a belated homecoming. Despite the encouragement of family and friends, the Sylmar native was unable to fit the race into his schedule until this year.

He is the top-ranked American in the men’s field and seeded No. 9 overall, indicative of the United States’ lack of prowess in the marathon, which has been dominated at the international level by African runners in recent years. Kenyans have won the last three L.A. Marathons and are five of the top seven entries in this year’s men’s race.

Unfazed, De La Cerda says he is shooting for a top-five finish.

“My expectation is to run a [personal record],” he said. “Considering it’s a much faster course than past years, I think that’s a realistic goal.”

For the 17th running of the L.A. Marathon, the course has been significantly changed to make it flatter. The first nine miles are mostly downhill, with the rest of the course featuring mild upgrades and downhills that are smaller than in previous years.

That should make for faster times, and De La Cerda hopes to shave a minute or two off his personal best of 2 hours 15 minutes 10 seconds, established at the Chicago Marathon in October.

Helping him along the course will be his own cheering section.

“All of my family lives in the San Fernando Valley and they’re going to come out and watch,” he said.

“It’s going to be something special for me.”

De La Cerda, who lives in Alamosa, Colo., with his wife, Ronda, and two young sons, Isaiah and Elijah, was a good but not great distance runner in high school.

He graduated from Granada Hills High in 1989 after also attending Mission Hills Alemany and Newhall Hart, the result of trying to find the right academic fit, he said.

Without a college scholarship offer, De La Cerda said he sat down with his father, Philip, who advised him to take a couple of years off from school and train on his own to allow himself to get stronger. Two years later, at 19, De La Cerda enrolled at Adams State in Alamosa, then an NCAA Division II power in cross-country and track.

Under the tutelage of Vigil (pronounced VEE-hill), then the Adams State coach, De La Cerda won Division II titles in the outdoor 10,000 meters and indoor 5,000 as a sophomore in 1993. But his reign as champion ended there after some top African runners enrolled at Division II schools.

“That pushed me out the next two years,” he said. “I wasn’t able to repeat again.”

Concentrating on the 10,000 after college, De La Cerda said he began to seriously think about switching to the marathon after he ran several disappointing 10k times and failed to qualify for the Olympic trials in 1996.

“When that year went by, I told myself I would get to the Olympic trials in 2000 in some event, so I can give myself a chance to qualify,” he said.

“I had been training with a lot of marathoners in Alamosa, and they were always encouraging me and asking me when I was going to run one. It was just a matter of time.”

That day finally came in the fall of 1999, when De La Cerda ran the Chicago Marathon and posted a qualifying mark of 2:18 for the Olympic trials. He nearly qualified for the 2000 Games, but fell short of the Olympic “A” qualifying standard after placing second at the trials in Pittsburgh. The standard was 2:14. He ran 2:16:18 in only his second marathon.

During the race, De La Cerda endured the type of physical pain that had initially scared him away from the marathon. His legs became heavy at the 20-mile mark and a blister on his right foot bled through his shoe. Still, he kept going.

“No matter what,” he said afterward, “I wasn’t going to run a gutless race.”

Rod DeHaven passed De La Cerda for the lead during the 23rd mile and won in a time of 2:15:30, automatically qualifying for the Olympics by placing first.

“It was hard to watch the Olympics that year knowing how close I was to being there,” De La Cerda said.

But any frustration was offset by the fact that he had established himself among America’s top marathon runners. De La Cerda’s stature has grown in recent months while training in Chula Vista. He has taken a leave of absence from his job as a high school history teacher to train full time.

“Peter has a lot more in him than he’s displayed,” said Vigil, 71, who coached 19 national team champions in track and cross-country in 29 years at Adams State. “Hopefully he can put things together in L.A. I think he’s capable of [a] 2:12.”

Kevin Collins, De La Cerda’s training partner, agrees. Collins was the top American finisher in last year’s L.A. Marathon, clocking 2:17:47 to finish sixth overall, but is skipping the race this year in favor of the Valley of the Sun Marathon in Phoenix on March 10.

Collins said he and De La Cerda have been running an average of 17 miles a day and have benefited from the presence of one of the world’s top marathon runners, Khalid Khannouchi, who is also training in Chula Vista. Khannouchi ran a world-best time of 2:05:42 in the 1999 Chicago Marathon while competing for Morocco. He became an American citizen in 2000 and intends to compete for the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics.

“It’s good to see what it’s like at the top of the food chain,” Collins said.

De La Cerda wants to experience the same thing in the L.A. Marathon, where his competition includes the winners of the last two men’s races--Kenyans Benson Mbithi (who ran 2:11:55 in 2000) and Stephen Ndungu (2:13:13 in 2001).

“If you say the Africans are unreachable, you’re never going to try and push yourself to that level,” De La Cerda said. “Slowly, I think American runners are making gains on African runners and the rest of the world.

“You can’t be intimidated. You have to run your own race.”