BY JON R. LaFOLLETTE | STAFF WRITER
WESLACO — For distance runners, pain is merely an occupational hazard. The body endures only so much before it kicks back. But as Janet Figueroa crossed the finish line Saturday at the Meet of Champions, any discomfort was replaced with elation.
As the Weslaco High senior read the results for the girls 3,200-meter run on the video scoreboard at Bobby Lackey Stadium, her time of 11 minutes 25.19 seconds was a new personal best, almost 30 seconds better than her previous record.
So what if she only placed seventh? Figueroa is simply happy to compete, pain free or not.
Only weeks away from graduating, this marks Figueroa’s first and final season participating at the varsity level. She’s always harbored ambitions of competing, but her desires were caged in a body once ill-suited for athletics.
Figueroa was born with a heart murmur. As a child, physical activities were often met with early fatigue and discomfort, sometimes sputtering as quickly as she began. She was a Mustang running on vegetable oil.
“I’ve always liked running and I was always running when I was little, but I would get tired too easily,” Figueroa said. “It happened so much, it just became a regular pain.”
Though her heart would occasionally act up, she learned to compartmentalize the issue and deal with it on a day-to-day basis. Right, she has a bad ticker. Right, she breathes.
So unpredictable and weary was Figueroa’s heart, even rudimentary activities in sixth grade P.E. gave her fits. It was around that time when she underwent a procedure to rectify her condition. Doctors plugged the hole in her heart during a minimally invasive surgery. Beginning near her groin and weaving through a maze of arteries and vessels, Figueroa’s heart was made anew.
It wasn’t until her junior year that she tried out for sports. Looking for a change of pace, she went out for track. As a novice-as-upperclassmen, she was assigned to the JV unit wherein she attempted competing on sprint relays. But as coach Pablo Almaguer watched, he saw a different path to success.
“She’s a little too short to be a sprinter,” Almaguer said. “There were some taller girls with longer legs who were always going to give her problems. But she had that endurance. She could run all day.”
And so it was that Figueroa made her varsity debut in the fall as a member of the Lady Panthers cross country team. Though a new face on a squad led in part by some of the area’s fastest distance runners, she held her own. At the Islander Splash Invitational at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Figueroa ran 5,000 meters in 21:57.6, placing 25th out of 111 participants.
But Figueroa’s season would end prematurely. Due to an excessive workload on relatively untested knees, including routine six-mile workouts, Figueroa developed patellar tendonitis in her right knee. At first the pain only nagged, like getting stung by a sweat bee. By October, it caused her to limp and made running unbearable.
“She was practicing in the pool for two weeks to try and see if that didn’t help,” Almaguer said. “She gave it another go, and we just shut her down. We didn’t want to risk anything.”
With surgery a possible option, it appeared Figueroa’s stint as an athlete was over as quickly as it began. But with enough rest, her knee healed itself. In December, Figueroa approached Almaguer about running the mile and the two mile for the girls track and field team.
Though Figueroa says she still feels an occasional twinge in her afflicted knee, she’s by and large been healthy. Still, her medical history hovers over her during every race.
“I pay attention to my body all the time,” Figueroa said. “If I feel pain during a race, I’m trying to see if it’s just because I’m running, or if it’s my body telling me something else.”
Heading into the first day of the District 31-6A championships today at PSJA Stadium in Pharr, Figueroa is looking to add to her medal count. To date, she has collected five individual medals (all bronze) and can automatically qualify for the area round meet with by placing in the top four.
This late in the season, Figueroa is still learning the pace, rhythms and strategy of distance running: knowing when to kick, balancing the need to remain near the front of the pack without exhausting herself in the process.
“She’s only just now starting to get the Xs and Os of running,” Almaguer said. “But you can see it. It’s there and she has to ability to keep improving. Right now she’s nobody because she’s come out of nowhere. But she’s going to make a name for herself.”