Some background on Lauren from her website:
While primarily focusing on basketball ever since she was four years old, Lauren’s focus was never on track in the springtime. Going into her senior year of college Lauren’s PR’s were 2:19 - 800m, 5:38 – mile, and 19:52 – 5km. In the past, Lauren would only run for two months of the outdoor track season because of basketball. But during the winter of 2008 Lauren committed to running easy mileage a couple nights a week, on top of basketball practice and games. The extra work certainly paid off in the spring of 2009 when Lauren’s PR in the 800 dropped from 2:19 to 2:07 (which earned her 4th place at the 2009 NAIA Outdoor National Championships). Lauren realized that she had a lot of untapped talent and decided to see what she could do when devoting herself to running only.
Lauren continued her education in the fall of 2009 and took advantage of her remaining eligibility and run Cross-Country at Huntington University. Lauren significantly lowered her PR’s again. In less than a few months, Lauren set new PR’s of 4:57 for the mile and 17:36 for the 5km. After finishing classes in the fall, Lauren and her husband moved to Beaverton, Oregon in January of 2010 to continue her training with the hopes of setting new PR’s and establishing herself at the national level under coach Andrew Begley.
The relocation to Oregon proved to be a good choice that gave Lauren the opportunity to compete against some of the best runners in the country. In just her first year of full training, Lauren qualified for the 2010 Indoor and Outdoor USATF National Championship meets in the 800 meters. After just one year under Coach Begley Lauren ran PR’s in every distance she raced, from the 800m to the 6 km: 2:03 - 800m, 4:16 – 1500m, and 16:38 – 5km.
After a solid winter of base training, Lauren is ready to take on 2011. Thanks to a great coach, talented training group, and amazing facilities, Lauren is well prepared to chase down her new goals for 2011.
She dropped over a minute from her mile time in about 2 years!