Full speed ahead

All the oxygen in Rex Nelson’s body seemed to have left him. It was as if there was no more air to use.

At the end of the final league race of his high school running career, Nelson, a Newport Harbor High senior, began to lose consciousness.

He’d just won the 3,200 meters, but his energy disappeared because of winning the 1,600 and taking fourth in the 800 earlier in the day.

A few strides after becoming the Sunset League champ in the 3,200 the lights went out. Nelson said his face planted onto the track. A bright raspberry on his cheek proved to be the only blemish on an otherwise sensational performance.

“That was embarrassing,” said Nelson, the Daily Pilot High School Male Athlete of the Week. “I still have images of that in my head. I used up all the oxygen [after competing in three events]. I felt like I was towing an anchor. I just passed out.”

However just as so many times in his life, Nelson got right back and eventually ran again. His resilience has led him all the way to today’s CIF Southern Section Masters meet at Cerritos College.

Nelson qualified to run the 1,600 and the 3,200 at the Masters, but has chosen to solely compete in the race track followers call the two-mile.

It’s a relatively new race for Nelson, who used the 3,200 as a means to return to form since he had missed so much time because of an injury.

The face-plant in the 3,200 might have been embarrassing, but Nelson took a much harder fall than the one he experienced at the Sunset League finals.

The drop came in the form of Illotibial Band Syndrome, a sharp pain that attacked his right leg just before the track and field season began. ITBS is one of the leading causes of lateral knee pain in runners and it showed little mercy on Nelson.

The injury forced him to miss the first four meets of his senior season, the same season that had been expected to be momentous considering he had given up soccer in the winter to improve his success in track and field.

But the pain just above his knee joint, on the outside of the knee, kept him out, tested his patience and demanded a strict rehabilitation. That rehab included a great dose of swimming.

“That was the worse period of my life,” Nelson said of dealing with ITBS. “Running is everything to me. It’s my life. I was so angry, almost all the time. I had all this energy stored up. I hated it. I was just so mad.”

Gradually, Nelson regained his strength and the pain started to subside midway through March. In April he got back his legs. This month, he’s reached the level he had wanted before the season started and found what could be his signature race.

“He never ceases to amaze me,” Newport Harbor Coach Nowell Kay said of Nelson. “We were conservative in using him earlier this season. We didn’t start doubling him (putting him in two events) until the last few meets. For him to run all three races at league finals was impressive. He had never run a competitive 3,200 all season. To be able to see him do that was real impressive. He’s been amazingly good.”

So good that he’s earned a partial scholarship to run at UC Irvine. He committed to the Anteaters back in February shortly before the leg injury.

Nelson used his future as an NCAA Division I runner as motivation to come back from the injury, but there was another factor driving him to return to the track quicker.

For some reason, the Newport Harbor senior has always put an extreme importance on school records.

“Rex is very interested in the history of Newport Harbor,” Kay said “He’s an interesting kid. He really likes hearing stories about different runners. He wants to know the person. And, he wants to leave his name behind, too.”

Nelson could have competed in the 1,600 and 3,200 today, but went with the 3,200 because he has a legitimate chance to break the school record in that event, Kay added.

“I think he would get a big kick out of that,” said Kay, who’s in his 23rd year as a head coach or assistant with the Harbor program.

Nelson’s personal record in the 3,200 is 9 minutes, 18.52 seconds, roughly five seconds off the school-record time of 9:13.60 set by Curt Herberts, who finished seventh at the state meet in 1999. That’s according to Kay, who keeps the records on sheets of paper that Nelson’s been known to stare at to gain motivation.

“It’s very important to me,” Nelson said of breaking a school record. “My dad [Richard] was an excellent swimmer and had a breaststroke record at his high school in Michigan. He told me the stories.

“I want something to be remembered by at Newport Harbor. I just want to leave my mark at that school and be remembered.”

So maybe that’s why Nelson has a strong interest to study history at UCI. Already, he’s been asking around at that campus about its school records.

But for today — he hopes for next week as well — Nelson has his sights set on Herberts’ mark. As the No. 4 seed in today’s 3,200, he has the confidence to advance to next week’s state meet since the top five move on and compete again at Cerritos College.

In the back of his mind, he knows he can also leave his name if he can win a state championship. Kay knows not to rule that out.

“He has been really focused,” Kay said. “When he puts his mind to something he is really effective at getting things done.

STEVE VIRGEN may be reached at (714) 966-4616 or by e-mail at steve.virgen@latimes.com.