Six months after he graduated from North Monterey County High in 2004, Danny Tapia had put on 15 pounds in all of the wrong places.
“I was out of shape and eating a lot of junk food,” said Tapia, a professional runner for the Mammoth Track Club (MTC), which caters to future Olympic hopefuls like Tapia.
“I didn’t want to be that guy who did the freshman 15 (term used for college freshmen who gain 15 pounds during their first year in college). So I got back into running for health reasons, not to get fast. I found a new passion for running that I didn’t have before.”
Did he ever. The 5-foot-9, 140-pound Tapia has literally taken his new passion and run with it, receiving a contract to run with MTC in September 2014. The elite stable of MTC runners gets all of their needs taken care of, including transportation, lodging accommodations and a generous stipend when they’re traveling for races.
They also have access to the best masseuses and exercise equipment to help them recover and get stronger after each workout. The only thing Tapia is responsible for is his meals. Not surprisingly, Tapia eats healthy, focusing on a steady dose of fruits, vegetables, good carbohydrates and protein.
“I’m 28 and obviously still young, but I’m not 17 anymore and I can’t eat chips or a bagel with cream cheese everyday,” he said.
“Your body is like a vehicle, and if you put good fuel in it, it will be better off in the long run. If you keep putting cheap stuff in it like junk food, your performance will eventually suffer.”
Tapia’s impressive list of accomplishments include running an Olympic-qualifying ‘A’ standard 2:14.30 for the marathon, which he accomplished with a fourth-place finish in the 2013 Boston Marathon. He represented the U.S. in the marathon in the IAAF World Track and Field Championships later that year.
Tapia’s personal-record (PR) marks include a 29:51.37 in the 10,000 meters and 1:03.52 in the half-marathon. Tapia can run at a 4:20-mile pace for eight miles, something he never thought was possible after graduating from high school. The fact that Tapia is one of the U.S.’s best long-distance runners is more unbelievable when you consider he was only the No. 5 runner during his senior year on the school’s cross-country team.
A Prunedale resident, Tapia never won a league championship and didn’t receive a single scholarship offer coming out of high school.
“I was over the sport because I didn’t think it was for me,” said Tapia, who grew up playing soccer and only took up cross-country in his sophomore year to help with his conditioning for the soccer season.
Even though there were faster runners in high school, Tapia knew he had some talent. In his first race as a sophomore, Tapia covered 3 miles in 18 minutes, a solid 6-minute mile pace. Tapia had PRs of 10:05 in the 3,200 during track season and a 16:13 over 3 miles in cross country, very good times but hardly great at the prep level.
Now his “slowest” runs, or light and easy aerobic runs, are done at a 7-minute mile pace for 10 to 15 miles. Yeah, that’s his easiest pace. But you don’t have to be a speed demon like Tapia to reap the benefits of running. His advice? Just run.
“Running has affected my life in so many positive ways,” Tapia said. “I’m healthy, fit and I feel great.”
No kidding. A typical weekly workout for Tapia consists of a long run, intervals, tempo and multiple recovery runs. He typically runs twice a day, one in the morning and the second session in the afternoon. Tapia does intervals on Tuesdays (hard 800 meter to 1,600 meter repeats with short recovery periods), tempo runs on Fridays and long runs on Sundays.
Tapia does his 6-mile tempo runs at 4:45-mile pace and the 12-mile tempo runs at 5-minute mile pace. Tapia’s long runs—up to 15 miles if he’s training for a half-marathon and up to 28 miles if he’s training for a full—is done at 6-minute mile pace.
Not bad for someone who didn’t take up running seriously until he was 19, when he competed in his first half-marathon.
“I liked the distance,” he said. “The more miles I ran, the better and better I got at it. (Becoming an elite runner happened) kind of by accident, but there’s no accident in putting in the work everyday.”
That’s the lesson all the average Joes can take out of this, that it’s never too late to achieve your fitness potential. Hartnell cross country and track and field coach Chris Zepeda has a keen eye for spotting talent, and he knew he had a gem when he saw Tapia working out one day at the Hartnell track.
After four years at U.C. Santa Cruz, Tapia enrolled at Hartnell and became one of the school’s all-time great distance runners. Once Tapia’s Hartnell career was over, at 23, he spent the next four years grinding away, doing multiple runs a day while balancing law school—he’s going to take the Bar Exam in 2016—and working at his parents’ restaurant, Norma’s, in Salinas.
Talk about getting the most out of your day. In December 2012, Tapia won the California International Marathon, earning the first big break of his career. The victory against a quality field made others take notice, as he received sponsorship opportuni-
ties afterward.
“That race opened up some doors,” he said. “It was one of the best races of my life.”
Tapia has a goal to win the San Jose Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon on Sept. 26 and the Philadelphia Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon on Oct. 31. Beyond that, Tapia has the Olympic Trials in February, with the goal to run for the U.S. Marathon team in the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.
“For young runners, my advice to them is if you’re willing to put the work in, there’s so much opportunity to improve. If a kid who never won a league championship in high school can do it, why can’t others? I’m doing things now that I never thought were possible before.”
