Edgar Jesus Vera Alvarado finding running groove at UAA

If you are in Anchorage and see a People Mover bus drive past, don’t be surprised if you recognize the young man in the photo on the back.

“Fun fact, my picture is on the back of a bus here in Anchorage for the athletic department,” Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé 2024 graduate Edgar Jesus Vera-Alvarado said. He is a freshman on the University of Alaska Anchorage cross-country and track and field teams. “One day I received a text from my coach saying, ‘We need to take some pictures of you.’ Later I found out that it was for a bus. Not really sure what criteria they had for putting someone on the bus.”

After returning from one of the team’s first outdoor meets, a friend showed him a photo of it, then while running in the team’s weight room that has windows facing the road Vera-Alvarado saw the bus drive past.

“I thought it was pretty funny just seeing myself drive by through the community,” he said.

Community is important. In running it helps keep the loneliness one can feel on long jaunts tethered, and on sprints it is vital in helping unleash an athlete’s dreams.

Vera-Alvarado found this early in life and it has grown as he has — one stride at a time, one bounding warmup after another, one powerful uphill and glissading sprint back down.

“I guess I’m a little bit shocked with my level of improvement,” Vera-Alvarado said. “I don’t think either me or my coach were expecting me to be at this level right now.”

Last week, Vera-Alvarado ran a 32:21.45 in the 10,000 meters for UAA in the Leopard Invitational at the University of Laverne in California. Runners from more than 75 colleges competed. The time was second fastest on the Seawolves, just behind the 31:05 of senior Zach Grams and ahead of the 33:25.86 of freshman Sam Roy. This season Vera-Alvarado improved his 5K personal record, or PR, to 15:19, nearly a minute faster than his JDHS PR of 16:17.

“My coach seems to think I’m a low-15 guy,” Vera-Alvarado said. “Being from training in Alaska inside of the dome and then going down to California and trying to do that on 70 degrees is kind of, you know, things have to be perfect in order to put down a good time.”

Vera finished his freshman outdoor cross-country season for the Seawolves in November with a 51st-place finish at the GNAC Championships in Bellingham, Washington — helping the team to a third-place finish out of 10 teams – and a 108th-place finish at the NCAA West Regionals in Billings, Montana, helping the Seawolves to a 10th-place team finish out of 22 teams.

Season races were 8Ks and regionals and nationals 10Ks.

“It’s funny because as a senior in high school you go thinking that you have experienced racing,” he said. “And then you hop in an 8K and it’s a whole different story.”

When track season started shortly after cross-country he trained as a 5K runner and four weeks ago for his 10K.

“I was training for 31:40 and it was just not there on race day,” Vera-Alvarado said. “But the fitness is there. It is just kind of hard putting it down when you’re learning how to race in a collegiate environment, I guess.”

The introduction to that environment came quickly.

On the first day of classes this year and practice, the team jogged three miles to a park, where they ran hard for 10 miles, and Vera-Alvarado had to sprint three miles back to campus for his first class.

Chas Davis, the UAA associate cross country head coach and assistant track and field coach, said in his mind, “Edgar is our unofficial freshman of the year.”

Davis and assistant coach Danielle Patterson knew Vera-Alvarado had potential when they recruited him.

“But to be honest, we didn’t know much more than that…about the same as we know about the rest of our recruited walk-ons,” Davis said. “But he quickly distinguished himself from day one as a guy who just had his stuff together. And that’s rare for an 18-year-old boy…no matter what level they’re at. Not only did he clearly take care of training business over the summer and winter — often the hardest transition for athletes from Alaska (who usually aren’t coming from a background where their summer and winter base training is more important than the in-season training — which needs to be the case at this level), but he just ‘got it.’ He understood how important consistent communication is, how important team camaraderie is, how important taking care of business in the classroom is. All without us having to tell him. Just taking care of all ‘the little stuff’ that makes a big difference in college. You usually don’t see this maturity until much later in college.”

The six-time Crimson Bears Region V champion in cross-country and track who twice placed in the top 10 at state entered UAA with personal bests of 16:17 in the 5K and 4:32 in the 1,600. He has eclipsed those marks.

“Mileage and intensity are all great factors, but the biggest thing to keep improving is consistency,” Vera-Alvarado said. “My coach said, ‘your freshman year you train to train and your later years you train to compete.’ We all get individual training plans depending on our speed and high school background.”

Vera-Alvarado came from a 30- to 40-mile-a-week background and is up to 65.

“It’s not a given you will get faster,” he said. “I have teammates that their PR was from freshman year and they haven’t since…I’m young for my age (18), still developing…My coach said I responded well to higher mileage and this summer I will probably train at 70 miles per week. This extra five miles for four or five weeks are probably going to take me to the lower 25 minutes in the 8K, that’s the plan…The more you go down the line, the more miles you have to run, the more reps you have to do, the more cross training, the more time you have to put down to get quicker.”

The first obstacle at UAA was making the travel team.

“That’s one of the biggest things that is different from high school,” he said. “You’re always on your toes…You’re always training for something…nothing is given, you can’t let your guard down. In high school you can just focus on that race and then if you don’t have a good day then you’re like, ‘OK, I have the next race.’ But for college you want to prepare as it is your last race. You don’t know if you’ll have another race or even the chance to run in that weather again. I always prepare like I’m not gonna have the same certain test or if the day is perfect I’m like, OK, this is my chance, maybe my only chance, to PR because we also travel less for college…You’re always trying to stay on top of your game and be prepared because, I don’t know, I guess you’re trying to show your coach that you’re capable of doing what you’ve been training for so long.”

The culture at UAA helps. Older athletes mentor younger ones. All are accountable and, like college students, must be responsible to arrive at classes on time, maintain top grades (the Seawolves consistently earn All-Academic honors from the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association), cook their own meals, read each class syllabus front to back and manage time. For student-athletes that time is condensed.

“We run a program that encourages our student-athletes to take ownership of their training, their racing and most importantly their overall life responsibilities,” coach Davis said. “We are here to help guide of course as sort of guardrails their final couple years after we set them on the right path during their first couple years. But if our student-athletes ‘need’ us by the end of their time here, we’ve done our job wrong. Edgar makes us look brilliant for already getting there as a freshman. The right rapport with the coaching staff, the right rapport with his teammates, and something tells me the right rapport with anyone else he’s ever come across. It’s been noticed by other athletic department staff members as well who have affectionately dubbed him ‘The Juneau Juggernaut.’”

“As great of a place as Anchorage, Alaska is, and as good of an opportunity as UAA is, it’s not for everyone. Most normal human beings need a community here to still thrive — and Edgar has helped make that the most attractive quality of our program. A great group of human beings working together to achieve a common goal without losing sight of the real important things in life. This team is a much more inviting community with Edgar a part of it. And because of that, he’s going to be one of our team leaders both on and off the track within the next couple years — while reaching a competitive level most college coaches would not have expected from him.”

For the Seawolves there is little downtime as practices can sometimes be doubles, and include weight training — UAA has specific weight training coaches — or cross-training, which can include biking or swimming, plus individual rehabbing and body care.

“When you’re first coming here you think, ‘I’ll just eat at the dining hall and I’ll do this,’ but you can feel when you are not resting enough, when you aren’t eating enough,” Vera-Alvarado said. “You can see your performance, you don’t feel as good on the workout. I can feel it if I’m not eating enough, I can feel if I am not sleeping enough and my older teammates were pretty good at helping us figuring stuff like that out…and the coaches are really good about, not controlling our diet, but encouraging us to eat, they want us to be eating all the time…They provide per diem on trips and we have group meals to make sure we are eating…I live in a dorm so I don’t have a kitchen, but I eat three meals a day at school — usually a full plate of whatever’s there and veggies and fruit — and have a bunch of cereal, canned soups, trail mix and bars in my room…I like a good brown rice with steak adobo or chipotle, you can’t go wrong with that…and I always have my water bottle with me.”

A lot rides on the individual, but each is not alone as there are four freshmen to a room and older athletes live close by.

“I was talking with Merry (Ellefson, JDHS coach) about this,” he said. “Coming from Juneau I thought it would be really hard to find a team culture as close but this is awesome. You’re getting a collegiate team and it’s like a family because you live together, you eat together, you do everything together.”

Another lesson learned early was kit management. The athlete’s travel bag should have competition shoes and backup shoes. The athlete has multiple workout shoes, trainers and spikes.

“At my regions pre-meet my teammate stepped on my spike and he ripped it open,” Vera-Alvarado said. “We had to scramble that night to go find me a pair of new spikes and couldn’t. I just ended up taping my shoe to my feet so it wouldn’t fall off. My coach went up to the starting line before we started and just duct taped it like four times so it wouldn’t fall off…and now I have two pairs of spikes that I have with me all the time.”

Majoring in kinesiology and minoring in nutrition, Vera-Alvarado said he is learning a lot about himself.

“That’s one of the big reasons,” he said. “I think my long-term goal is to be a coach, and what is better than having a coach who went to school to basically be well trained…All my coaches in life have been well-versed in something and have contributed to who I am. I have found out a year goes by way faster than in high school. I am very sad my freshmen year is almost over…I’m looking forward next year to just enjoying the process a little bit more than just looking for the results. I found out that I enjoy the process of training with my teammates and just kind of learning about my body and how it changes, how my body transitions from running 5K to 10K…You have limited big days, you had limited races, and you know not every race is going to be a good day. So if you’re kind of just clinging onto those and jumping big race to race, you’re not really going to find much joy…and it takes a lot to try to balance school, running and being a person. If you’re not enjoying it you’re not going to want to keep doing it so I definitely learned how to find the joy in the running…and I found how I learned how to be better suited and a better friend, I guess, while trying to do that…I love that we go out into the community, we volunteer at Special Olympics and high schools…I learned that I love running and I love helping people…I learned that I really love helping the community and people who are trying to be active, things I will focus on as I move on to getting my degree.”

Vera-Alvarado said he knew he belonged at UAA on Dec. 7.

“It was my birthday,” he said. “You see your teammates every day but you don’t really think of them as your friends at first… and then that day we kind of hung out in a different way…I saw their appreciation of me and I was like, ‘OK, I’ve made friends, I’m part of another community and I have another family now.’”

He said he would tell a younger Edgar “Be patient, pace yourself, enjoy the process…because at the end of the day 75% of the training is the process so enjoy that…enjoy it day by day.”

On Saturday, Vera-Alvarado will race a 1,500 at the Western Washington University’s Ralph Vernacchia Invitational in Bellingham, Washington. He is hoping to set a PR while waiting to see if his 10K time will put him into the GNAC championships.

“I can tell you he is a team favorite,” head cross-country and track and field coach Ryan McWilliams said. “Such a great young man.”

Vera-Alvarado has another goal before his first season ends and he returns to Juneau to help lead the Lynn Canal Running Camp, race the Juneau Ridge and enjoy the mountains.

That goal involves an Anchorage People Mover bus with his likeness and that of UAA Seawolves freshman Nordic skier Marit Flora, a 2023 Service High School graduate.

“I get quite a bit of good nature from teammates and sometimes even coaches about that bus,” he said. “I can see a future team ride on the bus before we leave for the summer.”

• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.