The Woman Who Left the Sport Better Than She Found It
A Book Review by Paul O’Shea
Good For A Girl
A Woman Running in a Man’s World
By Lauren Fleshman
Penguin Press, 274 pages, $28
There’s mischief in the title of Lauren Fleshman’s new book, "Good for a Girl".
Tongue-in-cheek, she playfully understates her resume.
Here’s a positive look at Lauren’s credentials: several California high school track and cross
country titles, Foot Locker runner-up, five-time NCAA champion and fifteen-time All American,
three Worlds’ competitions, coach, and entrepreneur who created a multi-million dollar food
company.
One more achievement readers will sense when they dip into her memoir: Lauren Fleshman is a
fine writer, with a voice and command that makes you wonder if she took courses at Stanford
University’s renowned writing program while competing for the Cardinal. This is a book worthy
of acquisition.
Perhaps her most enduring legacy is raising greater awareness of eating disorders, sexual
exploitation and misogyny, serving as an advocate for women while fighting for justice in a
man’s world.
Yes, very good for a girl.
Lauren Fleshman grew up on the wrong side of the Los Angeles economic tracks. A few years
later however, she was making a living as a professional athlete, on running tracks from Eugene
to Daegu.
In middle school Lauren easily conquered her male peers, particularly in the physical education
mile run. At the city’s junior high meet she finished second in both the mile and half mile,
drawing the attention of the Canyon High School coach. At Canyon she finished among the
state and nation’s distance leaders. She was the state’s first freshman in cross country, on a
team which won the state title and was called the best in California history. County champ,
state champ, Foot Locker challenger, Lauren Fleshman was strenuously recruited by the
nation’s top distance running programs.
During senior year Lauren sifted through the recruiting letters dutifully collected by her mother.
Finally, it was time to check out the coaches and athletes. Her first choice and visit were to
Boulder and the University of Colorado, where she met an icy Buffaloes team that looked
critically at the prospect’s poor dietary choices (burger and fries). Lauren recalls: “A quick scan
of the (dinner} table revealed that the team meal was a salad with dressing on the side.” Then,
on to Palo Alto and a warmer reception from the Stanford female (and male) distance runners.
The Stanford head coach was Beth Alford-Sullivan, then one of few women to lead collegiate
track and cross country teams in the nation. Stanford had just won the women’s NCAA cross
country title. For Lauren both the female leadership and the team’s results were especially
appealing. On the night before she left for home, Lauren wrote: “I met my future husband
today….” (Very prescient). “And I feel like I’ve known these people for years. I’ve made up my
mind.”
While she wanted Palo Alto and the Cardinal wanted her, it was late in the recruiting season.
Financial commitments had been made to other athletes. In a final meeting with the celebrated
Vin Lananna, Stanford’s director of cross country and track, she faced a budgetary barrier.
Tapping out numbers on a calculator Lananna said: “Here’s what I can offer you right now.” The
screen showed zeroes. “I wondered if he hit the clear button by accident,” Lauren remembered.
Lananna hadn’t but working part time she cobbled together the tuition that first year. By the
end of her sterling university career, she was on full scholarship.
The Stanford years were filled with victories, disappointments, and injuries. She won three
consecutive outdoor NCAA titles at five thousand meters and one indoor at three thousand. In
NCAA cross country she finished in the top five three times. Academically, she received a
bachelor’s in human biology/education and a year later earned a master’s in education.
With this impressive record Lauren Fleshman was ready to turn professional. She had a good
relationship with Lananna and asked him for advice in negotiating a contract. Her first stop was
Nike. While its pockets were deep, its offer was frugal. She asked for an annual $60,000. The
shoe guys countered with $30K. She hired sport legend, coach and agent Ray Flynn. Soon she
signed at sixty thousand, with several incentives based on performance: national teams and
national and world rankings (just do it, her employer advised).
With a win in the nationals over Kara Goucher, and her contract up for renewal, a bidding war
between Nike and Reebok resulted in a new Nike contract, six years at $125,000 annually.
When Nike advertising that sexualized and objectified women angered her, Lauren got
involved. She criticized the company’s proposed campaign, rewrote copy, and critiqued photo
shoots which featured her, and was surprised to receive the support of the company’s highly
acclaimed agency, Wieden and Kennedy. “The campaign received industry recognition, and the
poster featuring my defiant stare hung in locker rooms and bedrooms across the United
States.”
At nationals which also served as the Worlds’ trials, defending her five thousand title, she
sustained a psychological meltdown toward the end of the race, and stopped running for an
inexplicable thirteen seconds, before a mad rush to the finish. There was no redemption, she
finished an unqualified fourth.
After her race debacle she was visited in the stands by Alberto Salazar who recommended a
sports psychologist used by elite Nike runners. Much later she learned that while he was
helpful, the therapist reported their sessions back to Salazar, himself a Nike cornerstone. There
were no professional confidentiality guidelines breached, apparently—the therapist was
unlicensed.
Running in the Olympics had been the ultimate goal. A month before the 2008 Trials, and in
great shape, a sudden pain in her foot torpedoed expectations. She had sustained a navicular
bone fracture. Consulting with Lananna, there were two training choices. Take a few days off
and do whatever track training she could endure, or train in the pool. She chose the track and
was able to run strongly in the race but ultimately was the dreaded team alternate, the next in
line. Ahead of her were Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher, who had already qualified in the
ten thousand meters. If one of them relinquished her five thousand qualification, Lauren
Fleshman would be Beijing bound. Despite an email plea from her to Flanagan and Goucher,
neither gave up their spot on the five thousand starting line.
The marathon has always been a seductive event for distance runners. So too for a world-class
distance runner, who wondered whether marathon training could lead to the podium at an
Olympics or Worlds. That summer Lauren finished seventh in the Worlds’ five thousand, the
best finish ever by an American woman. And so it was that she lined up with elite marathoners
for the 2011 New York City Marathon. Sensibly cautious, she was just short of 75 minutes at
halfway, but pain such as she had never experienced in track races put paid to the experiment.
She finished in 2:37.23, in 16th place, earning $25,000. It was Lauren’s only marathon.
Like many entrepreneurs, Lauren and her friend, Stephanie Rothstein (a 2:40 marathoner)
couldn’t foresee that creating an eating supplement to help fuel Lauren’s husband Jesse, a
world class triathlete, would ultimately turn into a multi-million dollar enterprise. They called
the creation Picky Bars: the few guinea pigs assembled to try the concoction were (spoiler alert)
finicky foodies. Eventually, the product sold for a reported twelve million dollars.
Lauren Fleshman retired from professional competition in 2016 at age 34. The New York Times’
Lindsay Crouse wrote: “Fleshman also carries the wrenching distinction of most likely being the
best American distance runner never to make an Olympic team.”
After leaving a fractious relationship with Nike, Lauren signed with Oiselle, a women’s startup
running apparel company which created a running group, Littlewings, coached by her. “I filtered
as much of my work as possible through a broader feminist lens. I absorbed as much as I could
about not only physiology, but also patriarchy, diet culture, racism, transphobia, sexual abuse,
and other societal forces that disproportionately affect women. At the center of my coaching
was the development of empowered women.
I want to leave the sport better than I found it."
Paul O’Shea is a lifelong participant in the track and field world, as competitor, coach and journalist. After retirement from a career in corporate communications, he coached a girls’ cross country team and was a long-time contributor to Cross Country Journal. He now writes for Once Upon a Time in the Vest from his home in northern Virginia, and can be reached at Poshea17@aol.com.
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