The thing about Chris Gomez is, well, he doesn’t look like a masters runner. Not when he’s running with that fluid stride, certainly. And especially not when he’s sitting across from you sipping green tea. The man is 42, yet there’s nary the hint of crow’s feet around his eyes, no parentheses forming around his mouth, no gray evident in his jet-black hair.
Really, it’s kind of disgusting. You know, his ability seemingly to repel the aging process and still run times on the roads, and on the trails at the iconic Imogene Pass Run, that would make competitors a decade or so younger envious.
Gomez, among other accolades, won the U.S. Masters Cross Country 5K Championships in 2022, and he’s been a perennial Top-10 finisher at Imogene, last weekend placing fourth overall. Next up, he’ll pace good friend, Flagstaff pro Diane Nukuri, in next month’s Chicago Marathon, Nukuri’s swan song, and Gomez plans another masters cross country nationals in November.
How, pray tell, does he do it?
Simple, actually.
Gomez, a nurse practitioner in Flagstaff specializing in urology, just makes running a priority – something he’s done since his days in the early 2000s running for NAU. Don’t get him wrong: He puts in a full day seeing patients, doing his charting and all the usual medical-provider stuff, cooks dinner and spends time with his partner, noted local lawyer Ryan Stevens.
But Gomez also makes sure that he gets his runs in. Always in the morning, most days also in the afternoon. He’ll add some cross-training in the pool and some stretching and yoga, if his work schedule allows.
The run, though, is not negotiable. It’s a morning routine, as essential as brushing one’s teeth.
“The people I work with understand that lifestyle is important,” Gomez said. “We had a little discussion about that my first two years (in the practice). My mornings could start at 8 or 8:30. And 8:30 made more sense so I could get a run in and not have to rush to work. That means I can get a four-, six- or eight-mile run in in the morning, then double back in the afternoon, depending on what the day is like.
“Work has been really gracious and helpful. In May, I dropped down to four days a week without adjusting the schedule. I didn’t want to do anything to affect the morning run. For me, that’s a quality-of-life issue. Running, to me, is healthy and soothing and mentally I process lot on the run.”
Running is a priority for him, yes, but hardly an obsession. One of the keys to Gomez’s success into his 40s is that he strives for balance. Gone are the days, such as an NAU and later in his 20s, when he’d push to the limit; now, he recognizes that such single-minded focus and 100-mile weeks is not sustainable in his fourth decade, both in terms of injury prevention and mental burnout.
With age, in other words, has come wisdom – the old less-is-more philosophy.
“It’s a hard thing to learn and to do,” Gomez said. “I had that hammerhead mentality in my 20s. I understand I can thrive without doing it now.”
Take, for example, Gomez’s approach to Imogene, a race dear to his heart. He’s come close to winning before. His best finish was in 2016, when he placed second on the full course. He was third in 2018, seventh in 2022, eighth last year.
This year, at 42, he tried something a bit different, cutting back on the vertical training, another part of the less-is-more strategy.
“There was some point in the past where I thought I might win that race, but at this point the amount of training that it takes to stay healthy for an event like that in my 40s is more difficult,” Gomez said. “I’ve tried multiple years, like, ‘I’m going to train all of the uphills and see if that works,’ and I’ve done well. Then, there are years where I say, ‘I’m going to focus on the downhill,’ and that kind of goes relatively well.
“This year, I just focused on flat fitness. I did just one Mt. Elden climb this year and that was it, and it was my fastest climb (ever) for the first six miles. So that shows you something. … You are always teetering that line of injury, trying to stay healthy. Maybe by not going up and down so much (in training), maybe I did my body a service.”
There are, it seems, three types of elite masters runners: (1) those who ran competitively in college and perhaps beyond and keep up that intense training, dealing with chronic injuries along the way; (2) those who weren’t elite when young but have the aerobic capacity and VO2 max to excel on fresh legs; and (3) those who once belonged to group 1 but adjust their training regimen to the vicissitudes of adult life and career.
Gomez is solidly in that third group, and it’s made all the difference.
“In my 20s, I ran hard every day,” he recalled with a rueful smile. “Workouts were always very difficult, always pushing yourself to the edge and never really worrying about recovery. Thinking, ‘Hey, the only way I can get faster is if I push myself harder.’ In my 30s, I was more career-oriented, so I took a break from serious running, thinking that I’d pick it back up in my 40s and see what happens.
“But I kept running – there hasn’t been a year when I haven’t not run, except for a big injury in 2019 where I didn’t run for six months (stress fracture in the pelvis). I just didn’t race. And when I was 37-38. I thought, ‘I’ve got two years to get healthy and feel better again and get back into it (racing) in my 40s.”
True, you didn’t see Gomez in big races – save Imogene – in his 30s. He was getting his nurse practitioner’s degree and license and establishing his practice with a noted Flagstaff medical group.
The break seemed to not only give his body a break but gave him a new perspective on the sport.
No longer is he a prisoner of the 100-mile weeks running under NAU’s Ron Mann and John Hayes. No longer does he feel obligated to hammer every workout – or even do a hard workout. He now listens to his body, rather than forcing it to bend to his high-expectations and unyielding will.
Here’s how Gomez describes running in 2024:
“I’ll do a workout, but it’s usually starting out at a slower pace and by the end of the workout, if I feel really good, I’ll get into some fast paces. But it takes the whole workout to get there. I’m not starting there. If I start there, that’s like immediate hamstring tightness. And once the hamstring flares up, that doesn’t go away for a while.
“I get into runs easier, not going out the door at 6-minute pace. I’ve been trying to do more cross training as well, get in the pool at least once a week. But that doesn’t always happen with my schedule. I used to do a lot of yoga and stretching, but timewise with work, it doesn’t work. I can’t do classes and run at the same time. So, I do that at home. I use the Theragun (massage tool) a lot, every day before runs to help warm things up.
“It’s a lot of fun to be in the situation I’m in. I really enjoy running a lot and staying healthy is important – not only the cardiovascular benefits, but the life benefits. Thinking about going out and doing 100-mile weeks? That’s not going to happen anymore. I used to do 10-12-mile runs every day. Now, I might run that much every day, but it’s split up in two runs.”
The whole routine sounds downright sane – and doable. And it is for most runners of a certain age. But that doesn’t mean all runners will have the same results as Gomez. There’s talent and innate athletic ability involved, of course. However, talent without a disciplined and realistic approach can end in injury and frustration.
Gomez has shown that training smartly can pay off. Never was that more evident than in the 2022 U.S. Masters Cross Country Championships 5K in Boulder, Colo.
When Gomez was asked by fellow masters runners to compete for the Team Run Flagstaff crew, he jumped at the chance. This, he thought, was just the race he needed to dive back into the competitive running scene, after missing six months in 2019 with a fractured pelvis, followed by the Covid lockdown.
“That was the first race running with a year under my belt, not worried about injury,” he recalled. “That masters race gave me a goal. I put a lot of pressure on myself to get there and make it there healthy and competitive. The things I did differently in that year than what I would’ve done in my 20s was doing a lot of threshold and easy work. Threshold, what people are doing now, wasn’t a big thing 15 years ago, and doing threshold and sub-threshold work has given me the opportunity to get my heart rate to a certain level without breaking down my body.”
Gomez’s brown eyes widen with excitement as he recounts how that U.S. Masters race played out. He not only won the overall title, but Run Flagstaff won the team title.
“I didn’t pay attention to who was in the race; I just focused on what I was doing,” he said. “Relatively easy first mile, stay in top 10. Slowly, catch up to the point where I could put myself in a position to win. The last mile, there was a little bridge to run over, and I told myself before, ‘If I’m within striking distance at the bridge, I’ll make a move and go for the lead and see what happens.’”
Both Gomez and Anthony Bruns of the Boulder Road Runners passed leader Adam Rich in the final mile. And, with less than 800 meters to go, Gomez still trailed Bruns, but Gomez was reeling him in on a downhill.
“He was buckling, his legs were, with 800 meters to go,” Gomez recalled. “I was like, ‘I can run 800 meters. I got this.’ It turned into track speed mode. The last 200 meters was all out. I don’t remember ever finishing a race feeling that completely spent. It literally felt like my heart was going to explode.”
His patient, methodical approach to training as a masters runner, then, paid off when he had to give an all-out effort.
“I’ve been so consistent over the last 25 years that the fitness is there,” he said. “There’s a big belief in what I do now. That’s the big difference between me now and me in my 20s. I really believe I can win these races and run faster than these guys around my age now.”
Yet, he knows that the march of time is inexorable, and age can take a toll.
Take last weekend’s Imogene race. The course was shortened to 14.2 miles because of a storm-damaged trail, meaning the long, technical descent into Telluride was closed. So, Gomez knew he’d have to run hard on the quicker descent back down to Ouray.
And, proving he is human, after all, he hit the wall.
“With two miles to go, I had a fueling issue,” Gomez said. “I ran out of muscle glycogen. It took everything in me to finish the last two miles without walking. I was looking for third (place) but settled back into fourth.”
That’s fourth overall, mind you, not fourth masters runner. But his semi-bonk did show that Gomez is not invulnerable. Who knows how much longer Gomez can stave off the ravages of time? Will he lose his speed first or gain his first hint of crow’s feet around his eyes?
Bet on him hanging onto the speed for a long time.
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