She never knows what type of patient might come through the door. Could be a hedgehog. Could be a blue-tongued skink who’s under the weather. Could be a rabbit with a dental problem. One day, right here in Flagstaff, a wallaby hopped in.
Tereza Rumfola, a veterinarian at Canyon Pet Hospital, likes the variety as a specialist in “exotics.” As much as she loves dogs and cats, there’s a certain challenge in dealing with everything from parrots to bearded dragons.
Same holds for Rumfola’s competitive sporting ventures. She craves variety, gets bored with the repetition of doing one activity, day after day.
Running, exclusively, is not enough for Rumfola, who as Tereza Chylkova, was a member of Flagstaff High’s state championship cross country team and still holds the third best time in the 800 meters (2:19.67), set at the 2009 State Division 2 Championship meet.
Though no slouch in pure running, either on roads, trails or tracks, Rumfola, 33, now excels in a sport far more diverse. Throw in some gnarly obstacles, such as monkey bars, bucket carry or plate drag, and Rumfola is happy and challenged. She is, after all, the three-time defending Arizona state champion in Spartan racing’s “Super” division (10K) and, despite giving birth eight months ago, is planning to defend her title in Phoenix again this November.
She has been nationally ranked, too, finishing 10th at the North American Championships in 2022.
“It’s kind of like the exotics I see,” Rumfola said recently while her daughter was napping in the other room. “I like to keep my training interesting and different. I like being fit and functional, and that includes running. I mostly go to CrossFit, which is right next to Canyon Pet Hospital, which makes it convenient.”
But, occasionally, Rumfola will mix in a trail race (she dubs them “plain footraces”) as a form of training. Last weekend, for instance, she won the Machine Solutions 10K trail race at Fort Tuthill County Park in 50:14 – 90 seconds ahead of the second-place woman. She’ll be back at it again this Saturday at the Big Brothers Big Sisters Half Marathon on Observatory Mesa, where she’ll try for a double.
What makes Runfola’s recent running success all the more impressive is the fact she’s only eight months postpartum, a swift resumption of fitness while also maintaining a full practice at Canyon Pet Hospital and sharing raising baby Emberly with her husband, Chase, an MMA fighter.
(Quick aside: Given Emberly’s parental lineage, and the fact she’s only 8 months old and already crawling and even of the verge of walking, a future sports career seems in the offing. Then again, she might be a scientist.)
Many top-notch local recreational runners might feel a little put out that a woman who logs maybe 20 to 30 miles per week can beat them in trail races, but that’s not taking into account Rumfola’s well-rounded fitness regimen, which includes CrossFit and supplementary strength training.
And while Rumfola does not have the classic (or stereotypical) lithe runner’s body, her strength is evident in her sculpted physique. Add that to her well-developed aerobic capacity from years of running, and you have an athlete seemingly perfect for obstacle course racing. And don’t forget her attitude and discipline. Rumfola welcomes any challenge, be it a rope climb, balance beam or barbed-wire crawl.
Before having Emberly, she would routinely travel to various parts of the country on the Spartan circuit, winning some prize money (though, she admits, not enough to leave veterinary medicine behind). Two years ago this month, for instance, she won both the Hawaii Spartan women’s “Beast” (half marathon) and “Super” (10K) events. She also won races in San Diego and made the podium in San Antonio, among other events. Last year, while pregnant, she won an event in Las Vegas.
At Flagstaff High, in the late 2000s, she was a scoring member of the cross country team and middle-distance track runner, but she also “dabbled” (her verb) in volleyball, water polo and ultimate frisbee. Before that, while living in Hawaii, she was a competitive sailor.
She laughed when her interviewer raised an eyebrow at that last sport.
“It was little one-person boats,” she explained. “That was a good workout, too. I miss it. You’re leaning off the boat, hanging onto the ropes. This isn’t like some drink-wine-on-a-yacht sailing you could get all bruised and bloodied.”
So, given her yen for new experiences and her willingness to push her body to its limit, it’s easy to see why Rumfola was drawn to obstacle-course racing. She started, she said, during her undergrad years at the University of Arizona and kept competing while at UC Davis vet school.
“I was on the varsity (cross country) team (at Flagstaff High), but I was never number one, and I’m very competitive. So, suddenly, in Spartan races, I found myself winning and found a great community. A lot of those athletes are the same as me – they dabble in running, they dabble in CrossFit, they lift, they rock climb.”
Tereza Rumfola
What was her motivation?
Well, for one thing, she immediately found that she was good at Spartan racing.
“I’m not the fastest runner,” she said. “I’ve always been more muscular than a runner, almost too big to be a runner but too small to be a weightlifter or anything like that. … I initially tried some warrior dashes, tough-mudder type of races, just for fun with friends. Then I realized I was actually really good at these things, so I started to train a little harder and add some structure to my training, doing CrossFit specifically to learn how to get better grip strength and learn how to climb a rope and carry heavy things.
“It was just fun. I loved it. I felt like it really fit me. … I was on the varsity (cross country) team (at Flagstaff High), but I was never number one, and I’m very competitive. So, suddenly, in Spartan races, I found myself winning and found a great community. A lot of those athletes are the same as me – they dabble in running, they dabble in CrossFit, they lift, they rock climb. It’s good to have a little of everything. You should run a few days a week and get on the rig a few days a week or rock climb, be comfortable carrying heavy things and still moving.
“But there are many ways to train for it. Many are runners who just touch on some of the specifics every now and then and people who just hate running and get really strong at the obstacles and dominate those.”
When Rumfola toggles between Spartan events and trail running races – she also has started doing DekaFit competitions with CrossFitters – she encounters a wide range of athletes, and she says she blends in with them all. That might surprise some runners who turn up their noses at CrossFit and, vice versa
“Many CrossFitters hate running,” she said, laughing. “Whenever there’s a running workout at CrossFit, that’s my jam. We had 80-meter repeats at CrossFit this week. Attendance was low, but I loved it. Really, CrossFit is a very positive culture.”
Now that she’s a parent, Rumfola and her husband Chase, have to plan their respective workouts around their jobs and caring for Emberly. You’ll often see her doing hill repeats up Fourth Street in East Flagstaff with Emberly in the stroller, and Rumfola recently posted an Instagram video of herself doing pullups with Emberly strapped to her back.
“A lot of (her fitness routine) has changed with the baby,” she said. “I just can’t go frolicking in the mountains for three hours anymore. I’m doing a lot more focused interval workouts. I try to make my runs count, be really focused on threshold and intervals.”
Perhaps the reason Rumfola has been able to compete and come close to her pre-Emberly times is that she worked out throughout her pregnancy, up to the day she went into labor.
“It was important for me to train through it,” she said. “There’s so little information about what’s safe and what’s not. I trained until the day I went into labor. Running got really hard at the end, around eight months. It became really uncomfortable, just the pressure on the pelvis. But I maintained strength very well, so I was able to lift. As long as I nothing engaged my core too much, it was doable.”
Rumfola said each person’s pregnancy is different, so she’s hesitant to give advice to other women about how much they should exercise. But she said working out helped with her stamina during 24 hours of labor, with three hours of pushing.
She does have one piece of wisdom to pass on to expectant mothers: “Just do what feels good and don’t put too much pressure on yourself to stay fit and bounce back fast.”
She tries to heed her own words when it comes to her fitness now. Though she won the Machine Solutions 10K and figures to be among the top women at Saturday’s half marathon, Rumfola is cutting herself some slack these days.
“I’m definitely not as fast, running-wise, now,” she said. “But including (Emberly)in the stroller runs and just rolling with whatever (training) you can do is better than putting too much pressure on yourself.”
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