Where are you from? 

I am from Houston, Texas, but I was born in Mexico City.  

What brought you to Boulder? 

Boulder was always a dream home for me. I’d been coming here every summer since 2011 to train and I attended this high school running camp that was held at CU and then in college I worked it every summer. So I decided every summer, I’m coming to Colorado and I’m going to do what I love: run. So it’s cool to actually move here and make this my home.  

How did you first get into running? 

In 5th grade, the middle school track team was open for tryouts and it was the first time they allowed 5th graders to join the middle school team. And we were sitting at lunch and I saw Kimmy (a girl I had a huge crush on at the time) sign up and so I signed up. I wasn’t very good at the beginning but I kind of fell in love with running along the way. (Me and Kimmy didn’t work out, but we are still friends.) 

Strava FKT on Magnolia Road. That’s pretty awesome.  

Magnolia Road has always been kind of a happy place for me. When I went to the camp here, the Sunday long run was the last day of camp and a chance to kind of show your stuff and it was always on Magnolia Road. And that day, I didn’t even realize we were doing it. We got there and my coach was like, “Today is an all-out effort. I want you to go as hard as you can.” 

Normally at Magnolia you try and be somewhat conservative ‘cause you never know how things are going to go toward the end. So it was just a really cool experience. 15 miles all out at 9,000 feet is something I never thought I’d do. 

When was it? 

That was September 26 of 2020. The day after my birthday. And the day after I found out I won the US 15k Championships. A lot of happy motivation.

Why Altra? 

I actually had never really tried any Altra shoes. But prior to me even putting a pair on—probably about midway through college—I got on a kick where I wanted to start doing things more naturally. Even outside of running I started wearing more natural kinds of shoes and a lot of people on my team were kind of doing the opposite—when they weren’t running they were wearing super supportive, spongey shoes that would absorb everything. I did that for a bit, but I wanted to get more strengthening and help my feet get stronger. 

At first, I was a little hesitant. But I felt like it was a natural step for me to take. When I got my first pair I had planned to alternate shoes when running to get used to the feeling of it. But then I ran in the Torin 5 and I was like, “These feel pretty cool!” I had never run in anything like them before. Then the next day I put on an alternate pair and it felt weird... so my plan to switch back and forth every other day ended very quickly. 

So I knew immediately that I liked them a lot and was going to wear them everywhere. Even for workouts. So it was really cool in the first few weeks trying them for the first few weeks of trying them. It was different than anything I had worn before. I was very excited. I love how they feel. It really felt like the right thing for me.  

Plus, I was a Health Sciences major in college. So I did a lot of human performance research. So when Altra became an option for me, it was really aligned with a lot of beliefs I already had.  

Any races coming up? 

After the Olympic Track Trials, we kind of reset and the focus becomes the Valencia Half Marathon on October 24th. It will be my first trip across any ocean. Training has been going really well and I’m feeling really confident. Really looking forward to it. 

It’s been great getting to know more about our newest elite athlete and we're excited to see where the road will take us! 

Frank can be found on Twitter at @dancefrankdance and on Instagram at @dance_frank_dance.