ROAD TO THE TOP : Marathoner Harolene Walters Doesn’t Like to Train, but She Has Become a Master at Winning Her Events

Times Staff Writer

Forgive Harolene Walters. But she’s never experienced the back-breaking drudgery of true marathon training. No shin splints. No blisters. Perhaps an occasional bunion or two.

And what about the trademark loneliness of the long-distance runner? Forget it. Walters, a 43-year-old junior high school teacher from El Toro, hasn’t had time to be lonely.

Walters hasn’t had time to do anything except win races and become one of the country’s best masters runners.

Only five years separate her first 10-kilometer run, which she ran in tennis shoes, and her most recent major race, the L.A. Marathon, which she ran in a respectable 2 hours 57 minutes 27 seconds.

Along the way, Walters has:

Finished second in the women’s masters race of her first marathon, at Santa Monica, in 1983.

Finished first or second in the seven marathons she has entered.

Run the Boston Marathon three times, finishing first in women’s masters last year and second in ’84 and ’83.

Won 47 races in her age division last year, and was the first woman finisher in 27 of them.

Been ranked second in The Runner magazine’s latest poll of women’s masters.

“It’s the winning that keeps me going,” she said. “I like to win the races, and, I know it sounds silly, I like to win the little prizes that come with it like the shoes. Last month, I won a gold watch at the Beverly Hills 10K. I hate the training, but I love to win.”

Ah yes, the training. Hour after hour and mile after mile of grueling roadwork. But what is generally considered a must for most runners hasn’t been entirely necessary for Walters.

“I didn’t really train for L.A. and I wasn’t really running to win,” she said. “I was just taking it easy until the last six miles, then I realized I had a shot.”

The result was first place and her second-best marathon time.

The same thing happened at the Orange County Marathon in December, where Walters finished second.

“I had run a 10K in 36 minutes the day before, and I just wanted to run the first 15 miles of the race,” she said. “I ended up finishing the race in 2:59.

“I get out there and I’m doing so well and I think, ‘I can win this thing or at least come pretty close.’ ”

Her teaching position at South Gate Junior High in Los Angeles County has a lot to do with her limited training schedule, but so does a disdain for non-competitive running.

“It gets to you after a while,” she said. “It really gets to be a chore. I usually get home at around 4 o’clock and then go out and run. But most people who are really good runners do double sessions every day. I can’t do that unless I run at school.”

She does sneak in some running at school, and she does get in up to 10 miles a day. But to Walters, races are her best training ground, which is why she runs in them every weekend.

“Sometimes I’ll do a 10K on Saturday and a 5K on Sunday and then later on Sunday, I’ll do another 10K,” Walters said. “It’s like a social thing. I get to go out and see all my friends and have a good time.

So much for loneliness.

Walters and her husband, Ron, who acts as her unofficial coach, adviser and manager, usually run together, and although he has trouble staying with her at times, he said she’s rarely alone at the end of a race.

“One of the problems we have is that at the finish line, you should jog or walk around after the race,” Ron Walters said. “But she can’t do that. At the end of the race they just mob her, especially the women, and they’re throwing a thousand questions at her. ‘What do you do? Where do you run? What do you eat? What do you do the night before a race?’ It’s incredible.”

Said Harolene: “They say it takes 10 years to reach your plateau, so I figure I’ve got about five good years left in me. But I don’t think I’ll ever stop running.”

The running began five years ago “when I took a look at my legs and thought they were getting flabby.”

Soon after, a friend talked Walters into running her first 10K, which she competed in tennis shoes.

“I didn’t know running shoes would help because I had never run more than two miles before,” she said. “When I decided to run six, I was shocked I even finished and my feet were killing me.”

Once she got herself into the right shoes, the results were even more surprising.

“I started running 10Ks every couple of months,” she said. “I would usually end up winning the masters races or coming pretty close and thinking, ‘Hey, these people around me have all been running for years and I’m winning. What’s wrong with them?’ ”

She qualified for the ’83 Boston Marathon with second-place masters finishes at Santa Monica and Palos Verdes. She also finished second in the women’s masters at Boston, running what is still the best marathon time of her career, 2:56.40.

But she was doing it all wrong.

“I went out and just started running it like it was a 10K. I just took off and kept on going. I wasn’t even pacing myself like you should, but I held up all the way.”

She met her husband, a veteran 5K and 10K runner, two years ago, and he began what he calls a hit-or-miss kind of training with her.

“It’s kind of a trial and error thing,” he said. “Whatever works one day, we stick with for a while. She had never done any real speedwork before she met me, and within a year, her 10K times dropped from 39s to 36s. (Her best 10K time was a 36:18 at the Harbor Lite run in San Pedro in October). A three-minute drop in one year is phenomenal for any runner, whatever the age.”

But while the Walters are out there every weekend, competing across the country, a much larger goal is looming--the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

“That’s the ultimate right now,” Ron Walters said. “There’s no doubt in my mind she’ll make it. She’s got a year and a half to qualify.”

The qualifying standard is 2:50. A site for the race has not been set.

Harolene Walters knows that getting to the trials may mean more intense training, but she thinks she’s ready.

“It’s going to be a big help with Ron out there,” she said. “If he wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be out there.

“We’re peaking for that race that will get me into the trials. I’ve never really trained that much for a marathon, and it will be time to get serious and load up on the long-distance running.”

Bring on the drudgery, but hold the loneliness.

‘It’s the winning that keeps me going. I like to win the races, and, I know it sounds silly, I like to win the little prizes that come with it like the shoes. Last month, I won a gold watch at the Beverly Hills 10K. I hate the training, but I love to win.’--Harolene Walters