Jenna Melanson had never run so late in the day, or in such a crowded field.
By the end of Thursday’s steeplechase race at the USA Track and Field Junior Olympics National Championships, she had run faster than ever. And the recent La Center High School graduate was a national champion.
Representing the Flanagan Clan Girls Track Club of Woodland, Melanson outlasted Britney Johnson from New Hampshire to win the 2,000-meter steeplechase for girls ages 17-18 at the national meet in Sacramento. Her time of 7 minutes, 2.25 seconds was a personal-record by nearly 2 seconds and was 1.4 seconds ahead of Johnson.
“The last 10 to 20 meters I thought I saw her out of the corner of my eye, so I just tried to keep my legs moving as fast as I could,” Melanson said.
Melanson is the third member of the Flanagan Clan to win a national title in the club’s 54 years. And her winning time set a new club record for the steeplechase.
“She so deserves this,” said Flanagan Clan founder and coach Bruce Flanagan, who followed the race from home in Woodland thanks to photos texted to him during the race.
The other Flanagan Clan national champions were Laura Allen who in 1969 won the triathlon for girls ages 10-11 and Tara Ward, the 1998 national cross country champion for girls ages 11-12.
Melanson has been a hurdler since the seventh grade and that her comfort going over the barriers separated her from Johnson.
“She was a lot faster than me between the barriers. I knew that if I could hang with her until the last barrier I’d have a chance to pass her there,” Melanson.
That is the way the race played out, though Melanson nearly fell when she hit the next to last barrier with her knee.
The most stressful part of the race came earlier. Melanson said the 14-runner field was the largest she’s run in and early on she was boxed in behind a crowd of runners. She said she sometimes gets discouraged when a race starts faster than planned and she finds herself behind leaders. But in this race she remained relaxed and after two laps she and Johnson had moved ahead of the field.
The race started about eight hours after originally scheduled. It was originally rescheduled from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. because of temperatures pushing 100 degrees. It was pushed later two more times.
Melanson said she was glad the race was delayed until temperatures fell, though she had not eaten for almost 10 hours by the time the race started.
“I was pretty hungry,” she said. “But I knew that all the challenges and struggles I was facing were the same for all of the other runners.”
Her original goal was to run under 7 minutes. But as the race unfolded, the lap times were too slow for that to happen. Melanson said she focused on running a tactically smart race and was surprised to end up with a personal record.
Melanson started running the steeplechase with Flanagan Clan three summers ago at the encouragement Dave Holmes, who was the La Center High track coach at the time. Now she is a national champion who later this month departs for Massachusetts Institute of Technology to begin her college career. She plans to run for the MIT cross country and track teams.
