Featured Content

By Brendan Koerner

Nicolas Montanez believes in what he calls the “Three C’s.”

“Confidence means I can stay with the group and what I’m doing is right,” he said. “Change means I can adapt to change at any important part of the race. Three is close, it just reminds me like ‘hey, it’s time to sprint and not think about it.’”

Montanez focuses on this mantra in races. It helps him whenever he starts to feel himself doubting or letting the tiredness creep in.

Montanez is a distance runner out of Tucson, Arizona and will be representing the Mammoth Track Club on Feb. 29 at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Marathon in Atlanta for the chance to qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

Montanez never really saw himself as a runner until he met his role model, the late Al Buhl, at St. Augustine Catholic School in Arizona.

“I remember him watching our physical education session, like we were just playing soccer, kicking the ball around and running around, and he approached me after physical education, and he was like ‘hey, I think you’d make a great distance runner,’” Montanez said.

From that moment on, Montanez dominated almost every course he ran in high school. He became a 10-time state champion and earned a spot in the St. Augustine Catholic School Hall of Fame.

After two years at Paradise Valley Community College, Montanez transferred to Brigham Young University, where he ran for head coach Ed Eyestone and eventually became an NCAA Division I All-American.

“I loved the program, and I loved coach Eyestone, and I fit right in with those guys,” he says. “
All the training we did was similar to the training I had already been doing, so it made it really easy to mesh in with those guys.” BYU was where Montanez started to hone in his skills as an elite runner.

After BYU, Montanez moved out to Mammoth Lakes, California to train alongside other professionals at Mammoth Track Club.

One of the runners he has trained with in the past is Jared Ward, an athlete who finished sixth in the 2016 Olympic marathon in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

“He tracked Jared Ward down and when asked about it, Nico just said ‘oh, I don’t know, it can happen to anybody,’” said Tim Bentley, who was one of Montanez’s high school coaches. 

Bentley explained that this happened in a previous race where Montanez was trailing behind Ward and ended the race in front of him. Coming from behind to catch Ward is a feat not many can accomplish, but Montanez is one of the few runners that can say they have.

“He just doesn’t expect things. He works hard, and he’s humble, and that’s a big part to his success,” Bentley said.

Montanez holds the 33rd fastest marathon time among competitors going into the Trials with a personal best of 2:14:27, which he ran at Grandma’s Race in Duluth, Minn., to qualify.

For Montanez, as great as qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team would be it isn’t paramount to his personal success. Once his running career comes to an end, Montanez would like to help individuals with disabilities through physical therapy.

“When I’m done, I can go into my respective field and learn and grow and help these people,” he said. “I’ve always thought that way, and running has given me so much more than I could ask for. So when it’s time to get back, it’ll be a very fun journey and a big part of my life.”

Leading up to the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Marathon, Atlanta Track Club partnered with the Grady Sports Media program at the University of Georgia to profile some of the competitors in the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. The authors of these stories are undergraduate students enrolled in the program and have been lightly edited by the Club. See all of the stories at https://www.atlanta2020trials.com/news/uga-trials-project.