Francie Larrieu Smith

(This piece is for my book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from July 1988.)

THE AGE OF LARRIEU. “Did Smith win?” asked the runner beside me as the awarding of women’s prizes counted up to number one.

Smith? I blanked on that name, not remembering any woman named Smith. “You know… Francie,” prompted the man who’d asked the question.

Francie’s married name is Smith, but I still think of her as Larrieu. I’ve known her that way all her life, it seems.

She won the Steamboat Classic four-mile race in Peoria this day. Her time was the fastest ever at this seldom-run distance, 20:10, but she was happier about what the performance signaled for her near future.

Francie told the crowd that she would try in July to make her fourth Olympic team at age 35. She ended by saying, “Let’s hear it for the old farts.”

She may become one of the oldest Olympians ever. But after watching Francie grow up, I find it hard to think of her as being “old.”

Ron Larrieu ran the 1964 Olympic 10,000. When we met a few years later, Ron said, “I have a little sister who just started running. Someday she’ll make everyone forget all about me.”

He was a prophet. Francie was known only briefly as “Ron’s sister.” If Ron is remembered at all now, it is as “Francie’s brother.”

Francie Larrieu has been the only constant amid the vast changes in U.S. women’s running over the past 20 years. As a teenager in the late 1960s she was among the first women to enter the road races I ran in northern California.

She ran on her first international team in 1969, and she’s still making teams a generation later. She made her first three Olympic teams – Munich, Montreal and Moscow – in the 1500 when that was the longest distance for women.

She missed qualifying for the first Olympic 3000 in 1984. This month she’s trying out for the first women’s 10,000.

I hadn’t seen Francie in five years or more before the Peoria race. Her forehead always was lined to a near-worried look, and the lines have deepened now. She always was dark, and the Texas sun (she lives near Dallas with husband Jimmy Smith) has tanned her permanently. She always was sharply angled, and training to a fine pre-Olympic edge has left her more so.

Her look and her four-mile time told most of what I needed to know about Francie and her chances in the Trials. We needed to talk only briefly.

When asked if her training was on course, she said, “I’ve never felt better.” That alone was an important revelation, because her injuries have come more often and lasted longer with age.

“I’m running well,” she added. “But I know better than to look too far ahead. I know what can go wrong.”

Francie was hurt in 1984 and 1986. She chose to skip the Olympic Marathon Trials this spring rather than risk further damage to a sore hip.

Between Olympics – and injuries – she has completed the transition from the 1500/3000 to the 10,000. She began taking the longer distance seriously in 1985, when she won the U.S. 10K title.

There have been detours for injury and a fling with the marathon. But she is back on the course she’d set after failing in 1984 to make her fourth team in the shorter races.

Last year Francie ran in the first World Championships 10,000 for women. Last month she led all Americans – including Mary Slaney and Joan Samuelson – at the L’eggs 10K road race.

The youngest U.S. distance runner from the 1972 Olympic team now tries to become the oldest in 1988. She goes to the Trials feared by all the young contenders and favored by all the old farts.

UPDATE. Francie Larrieu Smith did indeed make her fourth Olympic team for the Seoul 10,000. Then she added a fifth by running the marathon at the 1992 Games. At age 39 she was chosen to carry the U.S. flag at Barcelona’s opening ceremonies.

Now in her 60s, Francie coaches track and cross-country at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]