Orange’s Martinez Making Fast Friends With Success : Track: Performances at Arcadia Invitational, county championships help erase doubts about his potential.

ORANGE —  There are rites of passage all good distance runners must endure, and how they fare in those tests often determines how well they develop in a difficult discipline.

For Jaime Martinez, a junior at Orange High, the first challenge came April 10 at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational. And he discovered his future might be brighter than even he first thought.

Martinez entered this season with loads of potential and a successful cross-country season behind him, but until he came through with the goods on the track the jury was still out. Orange Coach Lanny Carter had a notion that Martinez was special, but he, too, needed to see it for himself.

Arcadia was Martinez’s first big track meet, his first test against the nation’s finest high school distance runners. If he could handle the competition here, if he could simply stay close, if could just hold on. . . . There were many questions to be answered that Saturday night.

In the end, Martinez amazed his coach by slicing 40 seconds off his personal-best with a stunning finish of 9 minutes 8.3 seconds, good enough for eighth place in the boys’ 3,200 meters. He was the state’s first finisher and recorded the best time in the Southern Section this year. And his time was the fastest by an Orange County runner in more than two years.

“I was jumping for joy,” Martinez said. “It’s the only place you can set a school record and not even get a medal. Anything under 9:30 and I would have been happy.”

Carter is still trying to fathom the startling degree of improvement by Martinez.

“What’s amazing is what he’s been able to accomplish in such a short time,” Carter said. “People ask me, ‘How fast can he run?’ I don’t know.”

A sub 9-minute 3,200 certainly isn’t out of the question, although no county runner has broken that barrier since 1985.

If Martinez’s fast time at Arcadia signified a breakthrough, then his double victories at the Orange County championships Saturday at Trabuco Hills removed all doubt that he is indeed the county’s finest distance runner this season.

His times weren’t all that remarkable--a 3:57.75 clocking in the 1,500 and 8:40.3 in the 3,000--but winning both races moved him to the front of the pack. Now, Martinez is clearly the one others are chasing and that feels a little strange, he said.

Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t all that long ago that Martinez was just another eager young athlete hoping to find a niche in a new sport.

Martinez was a soccer player looking to expand his athletic horizons when he noticed that whenever he ran a three-mile training run with his teammates he usually finished first and felt better than the others.

“I just got a hunch,” he said of his switch of sports.

He came out for track for the first time last year and began turning heads.

Some runners can race a lifetime and not improve as much as Martinez has in the past year.

Following Carter’s less-is-more training routine, Martinez seldom runs more than 30 miles in a week, but those miles are often run intensely. Perhaps that’s why Martinez was able to drop from 4:40 for 1,600 meters to 4:28, then 4:22 and finally 4:20 last season. And maybe that’s why he blew his old personal-best for 3,200 to bits at Arcadia.

“Our workouts are low mileage,” Carter said. “He’s got a job, he’s got school and those figure into the equation. I want him eager to run. I want him to have an anxious attitude.”

Early in the season, Carter held Martinez back with the hopes that he could pull off a tremendous race at Arcadia. Certainly, there were signs that he was ready for something big.

Martinez was coming off a standout cross-country season in which he finished second at the county championships, qualified for the State meet and the Kinney National championships.

He skipped the Sunkist Invitational indoor meet and stuck to a low-key training and racing schedule that was geared for a peak at Arcadia.

In the days before the race, Carter told Martinez to race rather than concentrate on hitting a specific time. Personally, Carter believed almost anything was possible, even a 40-second improvement.

“I was afraid to think that fast,” Carter said. “I know he’s good. He didn’t surprise me because his workouts are awesome.”

Martinez’s goal was to stick with the lead pack for as long as possible. He didn’t count on leading the pack through the first few laps, however.

“I wanted to go on their shoulders and fall asleep,” Martinez said. “I was trying to slow down, but I couldn’t slow down that much because they would have run me over.”

The first lap passed in a swift 64 seconds and Martinez began to settle into a comfortable rhythm. By the time the pack reached 1,600 meters, Martinez had fallen out of the lead but was still feeling good. And then he heard his split, 4:32. “Oh, I hope I can last another four laps,” he said to himself.

But the doubt disappeared and he picked off a few runners in the final laps.

“I was ninth or 10th on the last lap and I got (Glendale Hoover’s Margarito) Casillas in the last kick. I broke a little too much contact with the leaders. I still felt strong, though.”

In the days after Arcadia, Martinez decided he wasn’t content with his superb time. Sure it was nice, but there are other important races still to be run and more improvement to be gained.

“I sure hope so,” he said. “I haven’t felt like, ‘That’s all you can give, Martinez.’ I hope my legs give me more. I think I’m doing OK. You can always do something to get better and gain a little more experience.”