RUNNING COACH GOES THE DISTANCE; PAT CONNELLY, 61, LEADS BY EXAMPLE.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

He's run 30 marathons in his career, but Pat Connelly has an uneasy feeling about the one coming up Sunday in San Diego.

``I haven't run a marathon in 15 years, so I'm a little nervous,'' the 61-year-old Van Nuys runner and coach admitted with a grin, preparing for a training run around the Pierce College track. ``I'm entering this race like a novice. And of course, there'll be all the people I've coached, wanting to see if the coach can do it.''

Consider Connelly's history on the track - setting college records no one has yet to better, placing in the 1964 Olympic trials, setting senior-citizen running records, still running 60 miles a week, coaching runners in the Los Angeles Marathon - and you know he's just being modest. Yeah, he finally admits, he is.

``I know I'll finish the race. I know I'll qualify for the Boston Marathon (with a time of 3:30 or better). And I know I'll run it (San Diego) in three hours and 20 minutes,'' he said. ``I could run it in 3:12, but then I'd leave the 100 runners I'm pacing trailing behind me. But I know I'll never run a 2:32 marathon again like I did when I was 25.''

The idea of running marathons was foreign to Connelly when he was a skinny teen in junior high. One of 13 kids in his family, he was a goof-off who failed gym every year, about as far from an athlete as a kid could get. He signed up for varsity sports in 1954 - the first year they were offered at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys - simply because he and his best friend knew the coaches didn't call roll, and they figured nobody would notice if they cut class.

He tried - and failed - at baseball, basketball, football, tennis. The only thing left for him to try was track. The first time he was ordered to run the 100-meter event, ``I'm flying down the track - and I'm lovin' it. And I'm pretty proud of myself. The coach was keeping a stopwatch on me and he said, `Connelly, in 10 years of coaching, I have never timed anyone so slow.' I couldn't believe it.''

Still, he joined a couple of varsity runners jogging around the track. They kept going, and so did he, for 12 laps, a total of three miles. When they stopped, he wasn't even winded.

``The coach said, `Connelly, you're a distance runner.' ''

Two years later, he was the school's first all-city cross-country and track athlete. And, although he didn't know it then, that was the beginning of a long career as a coach and a marathoner.

After serving a hitch in the Navy, he enrolled at Pierce College, and was the Western States Conference cross-country champion while leading the Pierce Brahamas to cross-country and track conference titles in 1959 and '60. His three-mile cross-country best - 14 minutes, 23 seconds - is still an all-time course record at Pierce, as is his 10,000-meter time of 31 minutes, one second.

After college, Connelly joined the Los Angeles Police Department, but never stopped running. And he inspired a few hundred other officers to join him.

``When I went to work there, there were about 10 officers running,'' he said. ``When I left, it was about 300.''

Even after retiring from the department three years ago, he coached the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department teams to records in the annual Baker-to-Vegas relays. This year and last, he coached the elite LAPD Metropolitan Division team to a first place in the desert race, beating 206 other law enforcement teams from around the world.

In the 1998 Police Olympics, he set a 40:58 record in the 60-64 age division of the 10,000-meter run.

Over the years, he also has been a volunteer track coach for students at Birmingham and dozens of other high schools, plus UCLA and USC. And since 1991, he's been the official coach for the Los Angeles Marathon; out of 13,500 marathoners (including novices) he's coached, 98.8 percent have finished the race.

Besides coaching the L.A. Roadrunners Club, a group of novices training to run the L.A. Marathon, he operates his own personal trainer/coaching business, Second Wind Running, and in 1995, put his running tips into a self-published book, ``Go the Distance,'' available for $11.95 at most running-shoe shops.

In addition to running, Connelly loves to teach others to run - especially kids who aren't particularly good at anything else, who are failing in school, who are involved in drugs or gangs. The discipline of distance running has straightened out many gang-bangers, convinced many failing students to study harder, helped win scholarships for kids who wouldn't otherwise have gone to college.

``I remember the first time I ran in an event, and afterward the coach came over and put his hand on my arm and said, `I'm proud of you.' I wanted to hear that again. I thought if I ran faster tomorrow, if I worked harder ... That's the way these kids I coach are. They do well, work harder, and when you give them an attaboy, they just bloom like a rose.''

Patricia Bates, 51, a Chatsworth accountant who trains for the marathon with Connelly's Roadrunners and who'll be running with him in the San Diego marathon, says the coach emphasizes proper training and avoiding injury rather than just trying to push runners faster and harder. And he makes sure running is fun.

``He'll push you, but more than other coaches I've worked with, he emphasizes trying to keep some balance in your life - and not killing yourself by doing too much,'' said Bates, who quit running marathons for eight years after training poorly on her own for the 1986 L.A. Marathon. She started training with Connelly in 1995, and has since completed marathons in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Tucson and Santa Clarita. ``He's very dynamic, but at the same time, very patient. He keeps everybody motivated,'' she said.

Michael Burns, 55, of North Hollywood, a sports manager, tennis coach and fellow runner, said Connelly, unlike many coaches, will work with novices as well as experienced runners, giving each the same time and attention.

``Pat has the ability to take people who have been sitting on their butts for a long time and then they get a bug in their ear and they want to do this, and get them ready to run a marathon,'' Burns marveled. ``He has never lost his passion for running, and he imparts that to the people he coaches.''

Burns, who will also run the San Diego marathon, said Connelly is successful, even with beginning runners, ``because he never asks you to do anything he couldn't do - or hasn't. He represents the best facets of the sport.''

Although Connelly has a runner's lithe and lean body, it's topped by a shock of gray hair. If you didn't know he was an athlete, you might think he was a veteran college professor. At many races, his appearance lulls inexperienced, younger runners to pick him as their unofficial running buddy.

``They make the mistake of saying, `I'll stay with this old guy.' Then we take off and they say, `Oh, my God, he's really moving,' '' Connelly said with a laugh.

Many years ago, while he was a patrol officer for LAPD in Woodland Hills, a burglary suspect made a similar mistake. The 17-year-old zoomed away on a stolen motorcycle, clutching property he'd stolen from a nearby home. Connelly drove after him until the suspect ditched the bike and took off on foot across a plowed field, with the cop running not far behind him.

``I figured I could catch him, but then I'd have to fight him, so I let him run until he was tired,'' Connelly recalled. ``Finally, he came up against a chain-link fence and just collapsed, and I grabbed him. He looked at me and said, `Who are you?' I said, `You made the mistake of being arrested by the police 10,000-meter champion.' ''

Are you ready to rock 'n' run?

As many as 20,000 athletes are expected to compete May 23 in the Suzuki Rock 'N' Roll Marathon, a race beginning in San Diego's Balboa Park and coursing over a scenic route, paced by music from 26 rock bands along the way.

If you want to run the marathon alongside Pat Connelly and the 100 runners he's trained, sign up by contacting Elite Racing, 5452 Oberlin Drive, Suite B, San Diego, Calif. 92121; enter on the Internet at www.RNRmarathon.com; or call [phone].

Or sign up in person during a three-day health and fitness expo preceding the marathon. The expo runs from noon to 7 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the San Diego Community Concourse, Third and B streets, San Diego.

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Marathon Man

At 61, Van Nuys coach Pat Connelly is in it for the long run

Bradford Mar/Daily News

(2) Pat Connelly, official coach of the L.A. Marathon and a record-setting runner himself, trains at Pierce College for next weekend's San Diego marathon.

(3) `I haven't run a marathon in 15 yers, so I'm a little nervous (Pat Connelly)

Box: Are you ready to rock 'n' run? (See text)