In her freshman year at Cambridge Latin High School, Darlene Beckford was afraid to go out for cross country because no one on the team knew her.

Four years later, Beckford has established herself as a world class runner, and the fleet-footed freshman required little introduction to the Crimson track team.

At Harvard Beckford has confirmed her reputation by slicing 27 seconds off the Franklin Park 5000 meter course record for college women, and remaining undefeated halfway into the season.

Always a First Time

Until this year, Beckford had never competed in a 5000 meter race and spent most of her time concentrating on the middle distances.

"I've never really been into cross country," she says.

Increased distance training for experience and strength combined with Beckford's natural speed and endurance enabled her to capture the first meet of the season against the University of Massachusetts at Franklin Park in 17:42.

But this performance proved to indicate little of Beckford's ability as the yardling finished the same course two weeks later in a record-breaking 16:49.

While Beckford clearly dominates New England cross country, she prefers the other two-thirds of the track season, although she says she doesn't know why.

However, Harvard's assistant women's track coach John Babington, who has coached Beckford on the AAU Liberty Club since 1977, has an explanation: "Darlene's temperament is such that she'd rather concentrate her efforts over short, intense races than over 18 minutes. She just doesn't get as much spontaneous enjoyment out of running cross country."

Beckford however views cross country more as a means to an end than as an end in itself.

"If I have a good cross country season it will help me for my indoor and outdoor seasons," she says.

Since Beckford began running seriously in her sophomore year of high school, she has achieved great success running indoors.

In 1977, Beckford filled in at the last minute for an injured member of the Liberty track club's two-mile relay team at the indoor Senior Nationals in California where the team came in fifth--an impressive performance considering that all four Liberty runners were juniors.

The next day of the meet, Beckford blazed through the age group mile in 4:51.2. just missing the gold medal by one-tenth of a second.