CAPE ELIZABETH – Julia Lucas smiles broadly, laughs often and is ready to run with the leading African women Saturday morning in the 15th annual Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race.
Not bad for someone who didn’t want to be here.
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Like a significant portion of the invited runners in the field of 6,000, Lucas harbored dreams of competing in the London Olympics. None was dashed in such cruel fashion as hers.
In April, she ran 5,000 meters in 15 minutes and 8 seconds — faster than any American woman has run this year. All she needed to book her flight to London was a top-three finish in the U.S. Olympic Trials in late June.
That wasn’t enough for her.
“I wanted to make it in exciting fashion and do something for all my friends and family watching,” she said Friday. “I got too excited.”
With three laps left in her race in the trials, Lucas made a bold move and broke from the pack. But two runners reeled her in with 300 meters to go and a third caught her at the line in a photo finish — 15:19.79 to 15:19.83.
By four-hundredths of a second, those Olympic rings slipped from her grasp.
That’s not all. The woman who edged her out for third, Kim Conley, had not run the required “A” standard of 15:20 until that race. Meaning, had Lucas not pushed the pace, she would be in London right now, even with a fourth-place finish, because Conley wouldn’t have broken 15:20.
“I don’t regret pulling her to a fast time,” Lucas said. “To finish fourth and go to the Olympics off the technicality of “A” and “B” standards is just not the runner I want to be. She deserves to go because she got third, in my opinion, not because of some business with standards.”
In Friday’s still morning air, Lucas wore a white sleeveless tank top, black jeans and sandals. After a news conference at the Inn by the Sea, not far from the race course’s first mile marker, she smiled even as she told her painful tale.
Now 28, she has been running for half of her life. Until high school, she grew up largely devoid of sports in Charlotte, N.C.
“Just reading and talking to myself,” she said of her childhood interests. “The cross country team was more of a social opportunity. They gave Popsicles out afterward and they didn’t make cuts.”
She stands 5 feet 8 inches and describes her running style as goofy or gawky. As a teenager, she was long and lean and, yes, something of a nerd.
But she could run. In her first year in high school, she completed a 5K cross country race in 19:59.
“That, at the time, in the area, was just huge,” she said. “So I was immediately on varsity, which was nuts to a totally unathletic kid like me.”
The excitement of being good at something and having people take notice was intoxicating. She trained harder and ran faster. She began winning races and wound up with six individual state championships and a national title in the indoor mile before moving on to a successful running career at North Carolina State University.
After college, she spent two years training and living the subsistence life of a professional runner in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. She said it wasn’t a great fit, but it introduced her to Ian Dobson, now her husband, who ran in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Together, they joined the Oregon Track Club. For the past three years, they have trained in Eugene, site of the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Lucas ran in the 2008 trials despite a stress fracture in her left foot, one of seven such injuries she has endured over the years, and could not finish the race.
“I talked myself into believing it was realistic,” she said, “but there was no chance.”
This year, a comeback year, seemed to be going well. She achieved the “A” standard in late April at the Payton Jordan Invitational in California, finishing behind only Oregon Track Club teammate Sally Kipyego, whom she watched on television Friday afternoon running for Kenya in the Olympic 10,000-meter run.
Last week, Lucas tried to watch the opening ceremonies but turned off her television after three minutes. She could have been there. Should have been there. Even after crossing the line in her trials race, she thought she had finished third until the scoreboard told her otherwise.
Other disappointed athletes, she noticed, walked quickly through the media area with heads down, ignoring questions from reporters. She faced the cameras and microphones and spoke from her heart, anguish and honesty on display for all.
“To me, the defeat is as much a part of sport as the victories,” she said Friday. “I thought it was doing the sport a disservice to not give the interviews.”
The Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 are on the distant horizon. Closer are the World Championships next year in Moscow. More immediate is the race Saturday morning in Cape Elizabeth, her second race since the disappointment in Eugene.
Last weekend in Iowa, she placed third in the Bix 7-miler, with two Kenyan women ahead of her and four behind.
“She’ll be up there again,” said Joan Benoit Samuelson, the Beach to Beacon’s founder and the gold medalist in the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon, in 1984. “This could be a huge breakthrough with her if she posts a fast 10K. This could turn some heads.”
Lucas lives only a mile from the track in Eugene. When she arrived there for her first workout five days after the trials race, she turned around and walked home. She packed her bags and headed to North Carolina, where her former college coaches and the current Wolfpack runners have welcomed her.
She had to get away from those broken dreams.
“I’m in the process now,” she said, “of replacing those painful memories with new, good competitive memories.”
Next weekend, she plans to run the Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod.
Between Iowa and Maine, Lucas finished reading a book by David Foster Wallace called “Consider the Lobster and Other Essays.”
The title essay is about a Maine lobster festival, “so it’s hilarious that I come here,” she said. “This is fun. It’s a very different feel from running on the track. It’s more a celebration of running than the intense focus of Olympic-style track running.”
She doesn’t expect to win the race, but she could use a little celebration. If you’re looking for someone deserving of encouragement along the race route, you could do a lot worse than the woman wearing bib number 122.
Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:
gjordan@pressherald.com
Twitter: GlennJordanPPH
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