After graduating from Santa Fe Indian School in 2009, Christian Gering slid down the wrong path and began abusing alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes.
Not three things you would exactly associate with someone winning races of upward to 100 kilometers.
That’s just what he’s done after deciding to run away from his troubled past.
Gering finished first in the Tahoe 100K in Lake Tahoe, Calif. Sept. 8, in 9 hours, 48 minutes and .24 seconds.
With the victory, Gering earned a spot on the Solomon Ultra Running Academy, which will take him to Hong Kong, China Nov. 26-Dec. 3, along with nine other runners from around the world to meet with sponsors and further the possibility of making trail running a career.
Gering is the lone male runner to represent the United States in the Academy.
“If you asked me when I first learned about trail running, then yeah, I’d say, ‘This is the top,’” Gering said about the accomplishment. “Now, it’s more like my foot’s in the door to get myself out there and start possibly competing at an international stage.”
Before he could even dream about competing at an international level, Gering had to find the itch just to return to running.
For his junior year of high school, he moved from Las Vegas, Nev. to San Felipe Pueblo, where his mother was from and attended the Indian School.
He grew up an avid soccer player while under the direction of his father, who coached him throughout his youth and always made sure he was in top shape.
“The emphasis with him was always running,” Gering said. “They had no soccer team at SFIS, so the next logical thing was track and cross country. I Never made any state or district teams or anything like that.”
Gering was disappointed in his lack of accomplishments at the high school level, especially when he was beat out as the team’s fifth runner for the 2009 state cross country team by a junior varsity runner.
“I was very disappointed with my running in high school,” Gering said. “I was upset, so I went to the AIAI (Institute of American Indian Arts) and wanted to be an artist and I just got into the wrong crowd. I stopped running completely and picked up smoking cigarettes, marijuana and alcohol — all stuff runners would never do.”
Gering didn’t run at all for two years from 2009 to 2011 after graduation.
His mentors Sean Trujillo and Ben Mora — who was a cross country state champion for Jemez Valley High School back-to-back in 1984 and 1985— were two people who helped him realize he needed to make a change.
“They finally told me, ‘Christian, you’re going down the wrong path,” Gering said. “They said I wasn’t at all who they thought I even was, so they were seeing my destructive behavior and trying to point that out to me.”
Gering finally accepted he was not making the right decisions, so he started backpacking with Trujillo throughout the Santa Fe National Forest, Taos and surrounding areas to stay away from the party scene on the weekends.
The innocent backpacking trips quickly turned into a large group affair and also served as the stepping stone toward his interest in trail running.
“While we were out there, we would see these pine cones on the ground,” Gering said laughing. “We started throwing them at each other and called it the hunger games or something like that. Tag, essentially and we started to realize we’re running all up and down these mountains chasing each other.”
The friendly game got one of the backpackers curious and he stumbled upon a race called the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, taking place annually throughout the French, Swiss and Italian Alps.
The group immediately took to the Internet to learn about the sign-up process, but were quickly disappointed when learning that qualifying races were a requirement.
“At least it wasn’t going to happen right away, but this gave me the motivation and the goal to one day get there,” Gering said. “The next logical step was to get with a team or a group of people who want to compete and that led me to Fort Lewis.”
Gering then enrolled at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo in 2011. He planned to restart his degree, but also wanted to walk onto the school’s cross country team.
“I quickly found myself running with Kenyans, some other people from back East, Midwest, wherever,” he said. “I was like wow, all these guys are really good and here I am coming back from smoking cigarettes, marijuana and drinking alcohol and I’m thinking if I should even be there.”
Gering stood his ground throughout his freshman walk-on season, but then suddenly became a force and one the team’s top-runners as a sophomore to earn a scholarship, while being recognized twice as an NCAA Division II South Central Region member by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
“Genetically, maybe with my ancestry,” he joked when asked how he was able to transition so strong in one year. “Honesty, it was the determination and the motivation to turn things around like I had been doing in my personal life — and if I could apply that same focus that I did when I tried to get high or get drunk, then I could see great results and I did.”
Former Fort Lewis cross country coach Mark Dutro coached Gering starting in his sophomore season and said he is not surprised about Gering’s latest accomplishments, mostly due to his work ethic and the networking he said Gering made in Durango with other ultra trail runners.
“I’m not surprised at all because he was one of the hardest-working guys we had in the program,” Dutro said. “I wouldn’t say we had captains, but he was a vocal leader on the team and he started doing this (trail running) right after cross country ended through a lot of local guys like Dakota Jones and Brett Sublett, who is a current assistant coach for Fort Lewis.”
The typical distances Gering ran competitively at Fort Lewis ranged from 8 to 10 kilometers, far below the distances he’s tackling now.
“You have to have strong, intrinsic motivation just to do the training, if not the race itself,” Dutro said about running races 50-100 kilometers. “I’m impressed. I don’t understand it and I don’t get it, but its amazing what these athletes are doing because these are distances that just seem beyond what humans should be able to do.”
Dutro believes that Gering’s passion for running was always supplemented by his strong heritage and love for the environment.
“Three passions I always saw from him where his passion for his Native American Culture, the environment and running” he said. “He always talked about ways of trying to combine all that and hopefully he’s found that.”
Following Fort Lewis, Gering competed in his first 50K at the 2014 Grand Canyon Ultras in Grand Canyon, Ariz., placing first. To date, he holds seven first-place finishes in races 50 kilometers or higher.
If all goes well in Hong Kong, Gering is hoping to pursue a career backed by sponsorship so he can put all his effort toward the Black Canyon Ultras 100K Feb. 16, which runs from Spring Valley to New River, Ariz.
The event also serves as a qualifying race to the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run June 29, 2019.
“That would be the goal for me next year,” Gering said. “Having that support from Solomon would be wonderful because then the full commitment of the year would be to train for that and have the best success, represent my communities and go make a splash at Western. It would give me a firm fitting in the sport.”
Gering spends his work life as a caretaker for the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, but also dedicates time speaking to middle and high school students in Northern New Mexico about addiction.
“The decisions you make may be temporary, but they can have long-standing effects in the long run,” Gering said he tells students. “I like to think you may be at a point that you’re not healthy and making wrong decisions, but you don’t have any less of an opportunity to succeed in life, but it takes that discipline, making a decision to acknowledge you have this weakness.”