Ukiah native Lauren Wallace a fast riser on national track scene

The strides Lauren Wallace has made this year can be measured in the way she reacted to her performance at the USA Outdoor Championships in late June. Wallace set a personal record in an 800-meter semifinal at Eugene, Ore., establishing an “A” qualifying standard that made her eligible for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials next year. It was a huge accomplishment.

And she felt crushing disappointment.

“Not making the final was devastating,” Wallace said by phone from Sacramento, to where she had just returned after racing in Europe for several weeks. “It took away from how fast I ran. In my head, running a fast time wasn’t the goal, making the final was. It was hard.”

Making the eight-woman final would have qualified Wallace for the provisional U.S. national team, and she had just missed. In fact, Wallace had run the seventh-fastest time in Eugene, clocking in 2:00.48. But she happened to be placed in the faster semifinal and finished fifth in the heat; the top four finishers in each heat advanced to the final.

By now, the Ukiah native has gained some perspective on the Outdoor Championships.

“It’s always a disappointment when you walk away from a race knowing you did something wrong,” Wallace said. “I didn’t do anything wrong in that race.”

She just happened to get caught up in one of the most talented 800-meter fields in the history of American running. With burners like Ajeé Wilson, Molly Ludlow and Alysia Montano setting the pace, there has never been a better time to watch the middle-distance women, or a tougher time to excel in the event.

“The U.S. women’s 800 is so deep,” Wallace said. “I think I have the ninth-fastest time in the U.S. right now, and I run a 2:00.4 - that’s an Olympic qualifying time. The depth in the U.S. is crazy right now.”

And yet Wallace, 26, has improved enough in the past year to be considered a serious contender.

She served notice on March 1 when she won the 1,000 meters at the USATF Indoor Championships in Boston. Wallace had never run this off distance in her life until the preliminary heat the preceding day. In the final, she trailed the leaders with one lap remaining but took an inside path and sprinted to victory.

Wallace was a national champion.

“It was so surreal,” she said. “It’s really hard to explain the emotions that I was feeling, because there were so many going on. I mean, I was happy, and relieved, and shocked, and proud. There were so many emotions going into play at that time. If you look at the pictures, I feel like the pictures speak louder than anything I can say.”

Wallace’s surprise victory altered the landscape for her. She had been making incremental progress for some time under Drew Wartenburg, who coached Wallace at UC Davis and now heads the NorCal Distance Project, a small group that also includes Montgomery High graduate and 2014 U.S. 10,000-meter champion Kim Conley.

The victory in Boston proved that Wallace was ready to compete at the highest level of the sport.

“The progress has been very incremental,” Wartenburg said. “In the grand scheme, we have talked about doing lofty things for some time now. But the flip side, winning the title like she did indoors, I think it brings a little bit of a rival moment: ‘Now I have the permission and expectation to achieve like I want.’ It’s a validation piece, but you kind of raise the bar on yourself. But that’s part of what you’re trying to do. You want it to matter.”

Buoyed by her indoor championship, Wallace has turned in other notable performances in 2015. She ran the 1,500 meters at the prestigious Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford in early May - she likes to tune up for the outdoor season with an “over distance” - and ran a personal-best 4:14.67. At the Festival of Miles in St. Louis in early June, Wallace ran the 800 in 2:01.13. It would have been a meet record, except that LaTavia Thomas ran a 2:00.99 in the same race.

Wallace’s European experience wasn’t as smooth. She ran races in Ireland, then Belgium, then Switzerland, then Ireland again, and wasn’t wowed by the results.

“My European season was actually kind of subpar for me,” said Wallace, who is sponsored by Oiselle, the women’s running apparel company. “Coming off the USAs, I was pretty emotionally tired. In Europe you’re basically racing, racing, racing. There’s not a lot of training. It’s something I need to get used to.”

Indeed, after Wallace placed fifth in that semifinal heat at the USA Outdoors, she and Wartenburg realized that all four of the women who finished ahead of her had substantial experience with the rigors of international competition, which include frequent travel, muggy weather conditions, a busy race calendar and a diminished support network.

Wallace survived, and her season isn’t finished. She’ll run the 800 at the FloTrack Throwdown in Portland, Ore., on Saturday; do a road mile in Flint, Mich., on Aug. 21; compete in the Hoka One One Long Island Mile on Sept. 9; and run the NYRR 5th Avenue Mile in New York City on Sept. 13.

“Last year when she came home from Europe, she was really on her last legs,” Wartenburg said. “This year, one of the goals has been to have as long a season as she can. She’ll race through August and into September. That in itself will be a win if she can get to September healthy and with her legs under her.”

The one thing Wallace won’t be doing much of is training in earnest with her Distance Project teammates. They aren’t on similar schedules right now. But a couple of new additions to the team, Kate Grace and Lianne Farber, are 1,500-meter specialists who should be able to push Wallace when they eventually synch up.

Off the track, the self-reported country girl from Ukiah doesn’t get to ride horses anymore - “It’s not worth the risk,” she said - but she still enjoys hiking and splashing in the river with her dog, an Australian shepherd named Finnegan.

Wallace is two years removed from her UC Davis degree in international relations and French by now. Someday, she says, she’ll likely enroll in a master’s program. But that’s a few miles down the road.

“I have no plans of venturing away from running until 2020,” Wallace said.

That’s an Olympic summer. And if Wallace can continue on her upward trajectory, she just might be representing her country in Tokyo.

Phil Barber can be reached at 707-521-5263 or by email at phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him @Skinny_Post and read his blog at 110percent.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.