Olvera on right path

Laura Olvera began running with a specific destination in mind. Now, some eight years later, it’s the journey, she believes, that has placed her on a pathway to success.

The UC Irvine junior enters Saturday’s Big West Conference Championships as one of the favorites to earn the women’s individual title. She was second the last two years and has the fastest time (20 minutes, 42 seconds) among conference foes this season over 6,000 meters, the distance contested at Fairbanks Cross Country Course in San Luis Obispo.

She has won or shared Big West Athlete of the Week honors in cross country three times in six weeks this season and she comes off a sophomore season in which she finished third at the NCAA West Regional to qualify for her first NCAA Championships, where she placed 83rd.

“I think she’s very capable of winning the conference,” UCI cross country coach Vince O’Boyle said of the Whittier High product. “Every race she has been in this year, she has been in the top 10, including the Arkansas meet [Oct. 13], where she was ninth [among 322 runners].”

But conference championships or national meets were the furthest thing from her mind when she joined her high school track and field team as a freshman.

“I started running, because this guy I was interested in was on the team,” she said. “When I started, I was more interested in him than I was in the sport. But, eventually, I became addicted to the sport itself.”

Olvera enjoyed moderate success in high school, but was still in the chase pack behind the elite runners.

She admits she was intimidated when she arrived at UCI, a notion that was quickly justified when O’Boyle asked her to redshirt the 2004 cross country season.

“I had trained hard over the summer before my freshman year and I was expecting that I would be able to make an impact on the team right away,” Olvera said.

“When [O’Boyle] told me he wanted me to redshirt, he said he saw a lot of potential, but things weren’t going to happen overnight.”

Later that year, in track and field, Olvera came within a second of qualifying for the Big West Conference championships in the 1,500. When she missed the mark in her final attempt, her post-race tears were interrupted by then-teammate Kim Ramirez.

“She came up to me and asked me if there was anything I could have done [leading up to that] that could have changed the outcome,” Olvera said. “She told me she definitely believed in me and she believed in my ability. But she didn’t think that I was really taking advantage of it. It was a little tough love, there, but it definitely got me straight. The next summer, I just worked my butt off and I tried to read up on anything and everything about running. I tried to see what would work best for me and increase my chances of success.”

During that process, Olvera focused on nutrition, swapping her traditional family fare for a much more healthy diet.

“Traditional Mexican food is not sugar-snap peas,” she said. “It’s not healthy food. So I had to make an adjustment. At night at my house, our traditional before-bed snack is sweetbread, served with either coffee or warm milk. That’s about the worst thing you can eat, in terms of calories. I had to sacrifice sweetbread, even though that had always been my favorite part of the day.”

Olvera finished second at the Big West Championships as a redshirt freshman, helping UCI win the team title.

She was 42nd at the West Regional, where UCI, paced by former Newport Harbor High standout Amber Steen, was ninth as a team.

O’Boyle said Olvera’s development began to shift gears, propelling her from a high school prospect to a college standout.

“The year she redshirted, she just didn’t have that confidence yet,” said O’Boyle, who has consistently polished diamonds in the rough during his 26 years with the Anteaters. “You could see [Olvera] still had some reservations about this whole thing. But, when she competed in her first track season, she ran well; good enough to where you could see she was going to be successful.”

Newly committed and bolstered by results, Olvera said she began unlocking her potential, redefining what she thought had been unattainable goals.

“It’s definitely addicting,” she said. “When you start running workouts that you never thought you could even possibly come close to, it’s exciting, thrilling. And it motivated me. I had the feeling that I could always do better the next time. If I was doing things I didn’t think were possible, who was to say that the next step wasn’t possible?”

But as serious as she became about running, it still functioned nicely as her escape.

“To me, the best runs are the ones I think about nothing,” she said. “Because, when I get back, I have to think of everything. For some people it’s yoga, or a hot bath. For me, running is my way to relieve stress.”

She prefers cross country to track, because, she said, she hates running in circles. And she believes that running has taught her how to pursue success in other aspects of her life.

“Running has helped me create goals in life that I had never thought of,” said the psychology major, who plans to use that degree to become a family or marriage therapist. “Like where I want to be 10 years from now, and what kind of career I want to have. It has given me strength.”

And whatever happened to that boy who lured her into running spikes?

“He’s no longer in my life,” she said.

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at [email protected].