Dixon’s Gilbert ‘Gilly’ Valdez has established himself as one of the top high school runners, not just in the state, but in the entire country.
The Peñasco High School rising senior has won state championships and won all-american titles, and he still has a year to go.
Most recently, Valdez placed fourth in a National High School Trail Running Championship. Valdez ran the 5.4-mile trail in 34 minutes, 14 seconds on July 24 in Salida, Colo., in a field of 57 runners from around the country.
Valdez said the event is normally bigger, but fewer people participated due to the late track season and other difficulties with the pandemic.
“It was awesome,” he said. “We took off, and I was just trying to hold on for dear life. And it worked out.”
He said he knew some of the names of athletes against whom he was competing from the national scale. And he was not caught off guard by the trail nature of the event, having competed in similar slopes in Northern New Mexico, and often being in smaller races to learn his own pacing.
Valdez was dominant all year on the track, even in a shortened 2021 season.
First, it was a state title at the March 26 championship, winning by nearly six seconds despite having barely any warm up time or a regular season.
Valdez continued to win seemingly every race easily during track and field season.
That season started April 24 with a West Las Vegas invitational, where he won against multiple 3A schools in the 800, 1600 and 3200 meters, with a margin in the latter of over 40 seconds. At districts, he won in the 2-mile by over 50 seconds despite being well off his personal best.
He carried that momentum into the Track and Field state championship, where the junior was the champion in the 800 meters, at 2 minutes, 1 second, and at the 1600 meters at 4 minutes, 46 seconds, easily pulling away from the field. In the 3200 meters, he was caught and settled for silver at 10:08, which he called a “setback.”
“I had been undefeated in the whole track season,” he said. “That was my one loss of the season, which really bummed me out.”
Back in December 2019, Valdez competed at a USA Track & Field junior olympics cross country championship in Madison, Wisc. He placed 23rd in the race against some of the nation’s best, becoming an All-American. His time in that race was not bested during the short cross country year in 2021 – against slower competition – but he can almost certainly improve on it going forward.
“It was my goal since eighth grade,” he said. “On my third try, I was finally able to make the podium. It felt amazing, that was a really good accomplishment.”
Valdez did not realize at first that he had made the top-25 cutoff for All-Americans until he saw his name on the big screen.
Valdez started running in seventh grade, at the suggestion of a friend, Maricela MacAuley, who is most recently the district champion in the triple jump. He shifted his focus from basketball and baseball into running, though not before some days of early morning running, then basketball practice, then training on an indoor road bike in the afternoon.
“I started realizing that I’m a lot better at running than I was at basketball,” he said.
Quickly, he saw his own potential while running with varsity seniors, and began training over the summer with a cousin. By eighth grade, he was placing in the top 10 at state in cross country, and then made the podium in the 3200 meters.
“I just fell in love with it from there,” Valdez said. “I started winning, and it got addicting.”
Valdez said he is most comfortable at longer distances, and wants to focus on the 10-kilometer race when he eventually goes to college, and he is looking to go out of state and potentially to Colorado or Nevada. He wants to study aeronautics or aerospace engineering to become a pilot.
This year, he is aiming for another cross country title, and is hoping to sweep the distance events for track and field. For longer-term goals, he is aiming to break 4 minutes in the mile one day (he has a ways to go) and potentially try for Olympic qualifiers.
“For the most part, I really don’t know,” he said of where he sees himself going. “Just keep training hard, keep getting faster, seeing where it takes me. And try to chase the dream, and run as long as I can.”