Sacramento State alumna and track star Lea Wallace was recently selected to represent the United States at the Pan-American games, but she injured her ankle and was forced to drop out.

She is on the road to recovery, and continues to work toward her goal of being a member of the 2012 Olympic team.

“One thing I’ve learned about injuries over the course of my career is that you can’t really put a timeline on it,” Wallace said. “As much as I’d like it say it’ll be better in two weeks, it could be two weeks to four weeks. You just have to go day-to-day and see how it feels and evaluate it.”

Even with the injury, she has competed well in events since June’s NCAA Championship, where she originally sprained her ankle while running a 1,500-meter preliminary race. On Sept. 24 before aggravating her injury, Wallace ran a personal best 4 minutes, 39 seconds in the Fifth Avenue Mile.

She said the race is the highest profile mile in the world. She finished 19th amongst the professional women runners.

She also completed a personal best in the 800-meters at the Harry Jerome International Track Classic July 1 in Vancouver, Canada, finishing third at 2:02.

“This is a big year for track and field – 2012 – Olympic Trials,” Wallace said.

“That is my primary goal going into my training, making an Olympic team and also just having personal bests and season bests across the board and just running fast.”

She said Olympic training is not any more intense than what she has been doing throughout her career.

“It’s funny because you would think it would be, but when you start getting close to the more serious races, you have to start to back off because you want your body to be really fresh,” Wallace said.

“Closer to the Olympic trials, I’m going to have to hit it,” Wallace said. “I’m probably going to have to run the fastest I’ve run in my entire life if I plan on making that team. So it’ll be about race sharpness and my fitness will already be there. It’ll just be about getting my speed where it needs to be and also the focus will be the race itself and how to execute that.”

She said it is all a process.

“A couple months down the road, I’m not going to say, ‘Now, I’m going to focus on the Olympic trials,'” Wallace said. “I was focusing on the Olympic trials last season … your training is more broad and it just starts to get more specific toward the event you’re going to focus on.”

Wallace said she’s not sure if she’s going to run the 800 or 1,500 meters. That decision will come much closer to the trials next June. The U.S. can enter a maximum of three athletes per event. At the U.S. Track and Field Championships this year, the top three women runners in the 800 meters finished at 1:59.21 or faster and the top three in the 1,500 meters finished at 4:06.20 or faster. Her current personal best in the 1,500 meters is 4:10.77.

Wallace still lives in Sacramento and stays close to Sac State.

“I’m still around the girls all the time,” Wallace said. “I love being around the team because it’s Sac State and the dynamics of this team that have really led to my success here.”

She still trains with Sac State track and cross country coach Scott Abbott and mentors some of the student runners.

“I have this sparkly green headband that I’d always wear at all of our home meets,” Wallace said. “I haven’t been able to go to any of their meets yet this year except for the Hornet Jamboree, but I went on Facebook and I saw a picture of the girls at the Stanford meet and they all had a sparkly green headband on. I felt like I was with them there.”

Wallace said it is harder to run without her Sac State teammates with her.

“Like when you are running a relay, your teammates hold you accountable and you do not want to let them down whatsoever,” Wallace said.

“Sometimes when you’re out there on the road and you’re running by yourself and things start to get tough and things start to get painful, it’s a lot easier to let up because it is a lot on you. You just have to find ways to stay motivated.”

She motivates herself by setting goals, but her focus right now is getting healthy.

“I’m just focusing on the little things that I need to do in my life to get my body healthy, to run as fast as I possibly can so that I can make an Olympic team in the future for this year,” Wallace said.

Katie McMillin can be reached at [email protected].