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 By Christopher Hunt
FULL ALL STAR TEAM HERE
When Phyllis Francis stepped down off the track after winning her second of back-to-back indoor national 800-meter championships, she took a deep breath, strolled toward a pile of her clothes and started to get dressed.
She told reporters that she didn’t expect the challenge that New Jersey’s Megan Tiernan poised with 200 meters left. Tiernan tried to jump Francis on the bell lap – sprint by before Francis even knew that someone was behind her. But Francis caught Tiernan from the corner of her eye. The sirens went off in her head. Time to go.
It wasn’t long before Tiernan’s move looked more like a cursory attempt. Francis had dropped her 50 meters later and put the race to bed long before the finish line for a season best 2:07.54, the fastest time in the country. Afterward, she simply picked up and left. Much like any other race.
Her reaction, or lack there of, isn’t indifference. It is evident in the way that she races that losing isn’t on her list of possible outcomes. It all plays to image that Francis is almost indestructible. The senior, who committed to run at the University of Oregon in Eugene, home of Track Town USA, never faced a challenge at a distance 600 meters or longer. In fact, she’s won the 600 meters at the CHSAA championships for the past four years.
She never blew up during races this year. Never fatigued. Francis ran, won and then grabbed her clothes and moved on to the next race. Even at the national meet. She never seemed vulnerable. If she had a weak second, she saved it for private moments. No one ever saw her laying on the track, drained empty by a hard effort or with her head buried in a trashcan after a race forced her to ditch her breakfast.
Nearly, as soon as the race ends, Francis seems to have moved on to the next one. Even her post-race analyses usually have something to do with simply improving on her time from the previous week or “seeing how I feel.” That’s because Francis spends most of her time racing by alone in front, with a chase pack that either already settled on second-place or is racing like they plan to cut down Goliath.
Francis didn’t blink when she won the national title at the National Scholastic Indoor Championships and she barely budged when she toed the line with three professional runners in front of more than 11,000 people at Madison Square Garden at the Millrose Games in February. That race included Mary Wineberg and Guyana’s Aliann Pompey, two Olympians.
Francis barely gave an inch. She finished third behind Monica Hargrove and Pompey. Francis ran 55.82 and was competitive the entire race, her time the fourth-fastest in New York State. The short straights and tight corners unquestionably hindered her galloping stride. She proved her speed again by winning the 300 at the CHSAA championships for the first time, running 38.77.
What makes Francis an anamoly is that she makes everything look effortless. She doesn’t gear up to make hard surges. There’s no noticeable shift in gears. She puts her foot on the gas and doesn’t let up until the race is over and no matter how fast she runs, there’s always something in the ease that she crosses the line that asks if she could have run faster.
But that might require a race. A real race. Not something that resembles a public time trial. She said that when Tiernan ran up to her shoulder at national that it surprised her. It woke her up. It should be surprising when you spend months racing alone, not even hearing runners breathing behind you. That wake-up call prompted Francis to drop five seconds off the last 800 she ran (2:12 at the Hispanic Games). On the same day in Boston, her sister, Claudia Francis won the 800 at Nike Indoor Nationals, insuring that at the very least, America knows that the best half-miler in the country is named Francis.
In all likelihood, her sister followed suit. No celebrations. Not even a moment that shows that the effort had remotely affected her. Like any other race, she packed up and left. Mission accomplished. On to the next one.
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