From Little Mexico to NCAA: Dr. Jose Lopez's Running Journey

Chris Detzel (00:00)
All right, welcome to another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, and today we have special guest, Dr. Jose Lopez. Jose, how are you?

Jose (00:11)
I'm doing well, how are you Chris?

Chris Detzel (00:13)
Good. How does that feel to be called doctor? I mean, that's, I you've earned that, right?

Jose (00:18)
Yeah, I graduated in 2017, so it's still kind of new, but the students that I teach at the university, they call me, so in Spanish, people, they're named Jose. Their nickname is Pepe. So I tell my students, just call me Dr. Pepe. It's short, it's simple. And so that's kind of what they know me.

But yeah, it's something different because it's not necessarily a medical doctor. It's more of a mental health clinician. yeah, that's kind of my professional kind of field.

Chris Detzel (01:05)
I love that. that actually helps me understand why Pepe de Runner, we call him Pepe. I was just thinking he was just being funny. And actually there's a reason, because it's Pepe in Spanish. That's his name.

Jose (01:19)
Yeah, so in Spanish,

a lot of names have like a nickname like Francisco. They're known as like Paco or sometimes they even like shorten it. Like there's a runner that I've known for over a decade now. His name's Alisio, but they shortened it to Licho. So, know, in Spanish you may hear

Chris Detzel (01:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Jose (01:47)
either their real name or a shortened name or just kind of a nickname to go with their name.

Chris Detzel (01:54)
Okay, that is so intriguing. I had no idea. And for everybody else that's listening to this, hopefully you learned something today. Well, one of the things that I wanted to get into is kind of your background around running and...

Look, a lot of us know who you are and one of the things you're known for and you have a little community around you and running these slow miles, long miles. Sometimes we won't get into that yet, but I do want to talk about that in a minute. I was like, man, Jose goes to these races and he's super fast. Sometimes he wins them, they're local and things like that. When I look at your Strava or what you've run.

You know, you're running nine or 10 minute miles at, you know, 19 miles or, mean, all constantly. So we'll get into that in a minute, but we'd love to know a little bit more about your running journey, kind of why you got started, how you got started and those kinds of things.

Jose (02:52)
Yeah, sure. So as a kid, know, we were immigrants. My parents brought my brother and I when we were children. So to us, Dallas was really a new place. And both my parents, when they came,

They didn't really know the language. We moved here. It was a neighborhood called Little Mexico, which is now uptown off Oaklawn and Douglas. That neighborhood, I mean, really, and again, now that I'm, as a parent, now I kind of see kind of what they went through. So really as a kid,

You know, I remember just being very hyperactive, being, you know, kind of all over the place. And again, back then they didn't really know kind of what ADHD was. They didn't really understand, you know, kind of a lot of the mental health issues that we know now. So really as a kid, I remember in elementary school, not even

Chris Detzel (04:14)
Mm-hmm.

Jose (04:19)
being able to sit in a desk, I mean, I would literally fall off those plastic chairs because, and again, I didn't really understand it, but all I knew was whenever it was recess or whenever it was PE, yeah, that was the time to go play soccer. I remember going to Sam Houston Elementary and then Travis Elementary.

Chris Detzel (04:22)
Yeah.

You're just moving around so much and stuff, yeah.

Jose (04:49)
again in the uptown area and just loving movement. You know, I love chasing the ball. loved whatever sport it was. It really didn't matter. It was just something that I kind of gravitated to because most of the day it was like sitting in this hard plastic chair. So, and again, my parents, they were just focused on surviving.

Chris Detzel (05:10)
Mm-hmm.

Jose (05:18)
They were focused on kind of doing whatever type of manual labor to kind of keep the right. And so I didn't really know about sports. I didn't really have an opportunity to participate in any youth sports or any recreation leagues or things like that.

Chris Detzel (05:29)
Make into me.

Jose (05:45)
I just knew that it was just something that I gravitated to. mean, my body really just kind of where I wanted that movement. you know, those were kind of my elementary days. Then when we were kind of upper elementary, now into the middle school, as far as sports, that's when I started to learn more about kind of what sports were.

Chris Detzel (05:51)
Needle it.

Jose (06:13)
Right, but again, I didn't really have that opportunity of going in any league. It was more just kind of street, you know, kind of street football, street basketball. And then we moved to Pleasant Grove area, Lake June, that neighborhood. we started, my brother and I, started to meet, you know, neighborhood kids.

Chris Detzel (06:13)
Yep.

Jose (06:39)
You know, we would run around playing basketball, playing football, just really any type of activity. And to me, you know, that especially newer generations, you know, I think that is one thing that, you know, I say they're missing out on just that notion of being out in the street, you know, with the neighborhood kids and just kind of

Chris Detzel (07:06)
Now.

Jose (07:07)
you know, was either shirts versus skins or, you know, I mean, it was just such an organic kids play. didn't involve, you know, any cell phones, any technology. And to me, you know, when I think about my childhood, you know, not to romanticize it, but to me, those were such good learning opportunities.

Chris Detzel (07:12)
Yeah.

That's right, yeah.

Jose (07:36)
you know, where you learned, I mean, I remember Pleasant Grove was a really changing neighborhood, you know, traditionally you kind of had, you know, it was kind of like the inner suburbs of Dallas traditionally, but then, you know, when we moved in, really the demographic started to change. So, you know, I remember the neighborhoods kids, had, you know, white kids, black kids, a lot of Latino kids. So it was...

you know, to me it was a really good learning experience to learn about the different cultures and also, you know, some of the negative things. I mean, I remember, you know, drug addictions was really big in those times. And again, nobody really talked about it, right? That was really taboo that nobody really even addressed kind of the crack epidemic. Everything was, you know, locked them up. So.

Chris Detzel (08:12)
Sure.

That's

right, that's exactly what it was.

Jose (08:33)
Yeah, so then, you know, once I...

Chris Detzel (08:36)
So want to go

back to something because you hit on kind of this organic kind of activity. I remember when I was a kid, we'd play Tackle the Man with the football or whatever. We'd come up with this game, it's like flashlight, like hide and seek. But if I flash you with the light, it's dark. We're playing until 9, 10, 11 at night. So those were the days and those are a lot of fun.

So I agree. mean, that's something set for that, you know, and something I push my kid to kind of, he's 14 now, you know, and like he'll go fishing at where he lives in Roy City and there's a pond there. He'll take his next door neighbor and they'll go fishing as much as possible, you know, just to hang out and do things together, you know, and I love that.

Jose (09:25)
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, especially in those days, just having that learning experience, right? Because, you know, I didn't know much about other cultures. I didn't know much about even English, right? Like English and how people spoke. So to me, those were really organic opportunities to learn and learn through movement, right? And to me, that was really powerful. So.

Chris Detzel (09:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Jose (09:52)
So yeah, so so then I you know, I grew up got a little bit older now we're talking about kind of the middle school years and And I really enjoyed all sports, know basketball football, know any team sport I really enjoyed But again, I didn't really have that experience of playing Kind of the organized the traditional, you know peewee whatever

Chris Detzel (10:18)
Hmm.

Jose (10:22)
So.

Chris Detzel (10:22)
So did you feel

like you're behind in eighth or ninth grade, then you're kind of behind the curve if you're not playing, if you decided to play football or any other sport, like.

Jose (10:31)
Yeah,

yeah, in a way because, you know, I remember trying out for like the basketball team and I, you know, I was pretty tall, like right now I'm six foot, which is pretty tall, or I would say average, but it's pretty tall for most Latinos. So I really enjoyed it, but again, I didn't have the technique, right? So I remember, you know, getting cut from the team or the tryouts.

because a lot of the classmates, they knew the drills, they knew the techniques, they knew kind of the positioning and all that. And that was something that I had no experience in. And that kind of segwayed into, well, what sport can I do? What sport is gonna be, or am I capable of participating in?

And that's kind of how I found track. You know, because track is really one of those sports where you don't really cut people. You know, I mean, and really cross country too. mean, if you want to run, whether you run fast or slow, you know, most track or cross country coaches, they'll either put you on the JV, but they're really not going to cut you, right?

So that's kind of how I got into running. And I remember in middle school, this was probably like late nineties, you had football season and then after the football season, well then that was kind of the track season, right? So a lot of the football players, they all kind of got into sprinting. But for me, it was like, well, I...

Chris Detzel (11:57)
Okay.

Jose (12:22)
I can do it and I can do it for kind of a longer time than just one lap around it. So let me try some of the longer stuff back then. And that was considered the mile, right? Like the mile was like the, right. Like that was the long stuff. So, you know, I remember having these football coaches and they would just tell me, yeah, yeah, you know, we'll put you in the mile, you know, and do, you know, kind of do your thing. So.

Chris Detzel (12:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We were even two-mileer in the track back then, so.

Jose (12:49)
I had no training. was no, you know, back then there was no knowledge of... Yeah, yeah. So again, it was just real raw. But I remember just enjoying it, right? I remember, you know, from Pleasant Grove we moved now to Richardson. And I remember the school, the middle school, Richardson Junior High.

Chris Detzel (12:56)
shoes and all that stuff.

Jose (13:15)
And I remember it had a cinder track that crushed, it was like crushed brick. And I remember just enjoying, you know, doing 10, 15 laps. And I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I liked, you know, going around that. Yeah. So, you know, from the house, you know, we're just going through a lot. There was a lot of, I would say just a lot of

Chris Detzel (13:22)
wow.

He liked running around the track.

Jose (13:44)
issues at my house. So I would try to get away. I would try to, you know, go out and I knew where the track was, right? So that, so to me, that was always kind of a, a place where I can go, you know, kind of enjoy the scenery and, and, and there was, you know, there, there wasn't a lot of people there. So to me, it was just kind of a way of escaping, right? And then,

from middle school, well now we go into the high school. And that's where things got a little bit more serious. So I remember the first day of cross-country. You know, I was in Richardson, they have 10, 11 and 12. So was a sophomore by then. And I remember, you know, most of the team kind of knew each other. They weren't really...

that many sophomores. But I remember the coach, he would say, you know, go run two miles. And this was kind of around the school and kind of into the neighborhoods. And I was the last person. I was, I was like behind the slowest girls. And I remember just being out of breath. I remember like not even able to jog those two miles.

Chris Detzel (14:52)
Mm-hmm.

Really?

10th grade.

Jose (15:12)
Yeah, yeah. So here I was maybe like 14, 15. And I remember I was like, you know, why am I so out of shape? why, why can't I keep up? So then, you know, the coach, Coach Estelle, and he kind of knew, he kind of knew about running. He was an older teacher. So he kind of, he kind of knew in, in, in,

Chris Detzel (15:16)
Yeah.

Jose (15:40)
what I was very appreciative of him was that he kind of saw that rawness in me and he encouraged me. He said, you know, right now, you know, don't look at where you are now, kind of look at kind of where you want to be. Right. So in that season, I remember in 10th grade, I went from not even able to jog two miles.

the end of Cross Country, was running, I think, in the 17 minute 5Ks. So that, I mean, that was just, and you're talking like from August to maybe November, right? So it...

Chris Detzel (16:13)
Dang dude.

But that's

the beauty, so I'll stop you there. That's the beauty about running, is if you stay consistent just for a little bit, you'll see huge gains. And you saw crazy huge gains. So that's great.

Jose (16:30)
Yeah, yeah.

but again, you know, it's to me, it was just someone that could identify what that wrongness was, right? Because I would say a lot of coaches, especially at kind of the high school level, they're just kind of wanting the already product made, right? Like they want kids that have played, you know,

Wreck league they want kids that have you know, so a lot of times I think what ends up happening is they miss kind of that raw talent that maybe some of these kids don't have that opportunity or You know, you know, they they have you know, the immigrant families that may not even know about some of these options so So yeah, you know after a year Coach Estelle he kind of

Chris Detzel (17:00)
Yeah.

Mm.

Jose (17:28)
quick coaching. think there was just a lot of politics that were involved in athletics. And what's, I guess what's interesting, kind of fast forward till I graduated college and became a teacher myself, you know, one of the things that I found was here in Texas, you know, really the emphasis, especially in high school is in football. Like I remember interviewing,

Chris Detzel (17:53)
Yeah, of course.

Jose (17:57)
interviewing for a position in Garland, Garland ISD, and I was telling them, you know, I'm interested in coaching track and cross country. And he was like, well, if you're not going to coach football, we don't want you. We have, we have a nine, nine football coaching positions and that's our focus. So, you know, we, we, don't care about cross country or track. That's, you know, that's an afterthought. so I think part of, you know, I, I think part of why coaches still kind of

Chris Detzel (18:18)
Right.

Yeah, that's true.

Jose (18:27)
quit after that year is, you he was probably tired of, of kind of what that emphasis was. So, you know, after that, you know, the, rest of my high school, I just had football coaches that again, really, I mean, you, you kind of know, but you don't really know. Cause that's not the emphasis, right? so, you know, in the high school again, I think I didn't really reach my potential. I think I was just kind of.

Chris Detzel (18:34)
Good play.

Jose (18:56)
running but kind of just doing my own thing. But then, know, in 11th grade there was a gentleman really influential. He really mentored me. His name is Bert Williams. And he still participates in a lot of track and field events. I know he's still part of the USATF.

kind of the local chapter in this area. But Coach Williams, I mean, he really took me under his arm and I started to do what they called summer track. know, again, I had no idea they even, summer track was just, yeah, yeah, like I had no idea there was even summer track. Like to me, you know, I was just running because, you know, I liked it and that was something that, you know, I knew I wasn't going to get cut.

Chris Detzel (19:28)
Yeah.

He just said do it and you did it.

Jose (19:56)
So with, with coach Williams, he had a lot of knowledge and sprinting, like he, he, he really knew, you know, the hundred, the 200, the 400. And again, here I am kind of a, you know, a more, middle or long distance, you know, whatever you want to label it. Right. But, but he really showed me like the art of the intervals. Like he.

Chris Detzel (20:18)
instance runner back then for sure.

Jose (20:26)
He really showed me drills. He showed me kind of that the movements, the strength training, know, kind of the importance of form. So when I was, you know, running with Coach Williams, to me, he really showed me the art of running. And, you know,

I remember some of the workouts we would do, we would do like 12 by 200s or we would do eight by 400s. And I remember he would always stay at the last hundred and then he would sprint with me and then I had to keep up with him. So again, just a great personality, a great person, a great mentor. And I think the other gift that he provided me was

he really put a light into, you can run in college. Because again, before that, it was just like, well, I just kind of want to do it because it gives me something to do. And also, helps me with kind of my mentality, right? Like my mental stability. Because again, I knew nothing about mental health. I knew nothing about kind of

Chris Detzel (21:31)
Really?

Jose (21:55)
Intergenerational trauma. I knew nothing about depression or a lot of that grief Everything was just you know Get through school, you know You have to do better than us, you know, and and everything was just push push push, right? So really coach Williams He kind of gave me that outlet. He gave me that You know These people are going to college

Chris Detzel (22:13)
Yeah.

Jose (22:24)
they're running at the NCAA and you can be like them. And really, by my senior year, that was kind of my mentality. My mentality was, I'm gonna run in college. Just because maybe I'm not gonna be able to...

Chris Detzel (22:29)
Yeah. Wow.

Jose (22:52)
Compete or to make all state or all, region but you know, I do think I can compete and and you know by senior year That's when I was running pretty well. I mean I was I think I ran in the 3200 like low tens maybe like 1020 and 1600 like a 440s And the 800 I was running like low two minutes. So, you know that the times were decent and I remember

Chris Detzel (23:16)
Well.

Jose (23:22)
Coach Williams, he was telling me, you know, there's a school in Idaho, there's a school in, you know, different areas, Kansas. But, you know, being a immigrant Latino, there's something in Spanish called familiaresmo, which there's not really a translation in English, but basically it means like duty to your family. And by that time,

Chris Detzel (23:39)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jose (23:49)
You know, my brother had left. went to Princeton and New Jersey. So I kind of felt that duty to my parents, right? Like I felt that obligation. So, you know, one of the things that I realized is, you know, I do want to go to college. I do want to run and be competitive, but I also want to be close and

Chris Detzel (23:53)
Well.

Jose (24:19)
and kind of watch out for my parents, you know. So one of the things that I started to do, and again, Coach Bear was a big part of this, is I started to look at kind of local universities and colleges. And one of the universities that stood out

Chris Detzel (24:25)
Yeah.

Yep.

Jose (24:47)
Again, I wasn't really fast or I wasn't really a D1 athlete. So to me, I was looking more at how can I still do what I like and then ultimately get my degree because that's kind of what I want. So there was a...

Chris Detzel (24:55)
pretty fast. Yeah.

Absolutely. 1000 % smart.

Jose (25:15)
a lady by the name of Francie LaRue Smith. And people might know her because she was a six-time Olympian and she lived before she started coaching at Southwestern, Southwestern University. She was living here in the Lake Highlands area. I believe she actually lived close to Norfolk Park when she was competing. But anyway,

Francie LaRue Smith, you know, I was very impressed by kind of her credentials, six-time Olympian. You know, she ran, yeah, she ran, you know, anything from the 800 all the way to the marathon. I believe her last Olympics was Barcelona in 1992. So, you know, I was really impressed with her personal credentials and I went to go visit that school.

Chris Detzel (25:53)
Pretty impressive.

Jose (26:13)
relatively small school, think at the time, I'm not sure now, but at the time it had about 1200 students. And I was like, yeah, this is somewhere that I think I could be in. This is somewhere that I think I could thrive. So I ended up applying and getting accepted. And that was the beginning of my journey into running and kind of that.

transition into college. I believe Francie, she had just started coaching. So I graduated high school in 2003 and then I started college in that same year. And she had maybe been there for one or two years and she recruited myself and then two other freshmen.

and we were like the top runners. Like we were the, it was another runner from Brownsville, his name's Aaron Contreras, who I still call a friend. So we connected and that's where I really started to understand training because, and with Coach Williams, it was a lot of speed, was a lot of dynamics, it was a lot of just explosiveness, but there really wasn't

Chris Detzel (27:29)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (27:38)
understanding of endurance, right? With Coach Francie LaRue Smith, now we're doing things like hills, we're doing things like thresholds, we're doing mile repeats, and I still remember some of these workouts. So this was in Georgetown, which is just north of Austin, and there was a park, Georgetown Park,

Chris Detzel (27:41)
Got it.

Mm-hmm.

Jose (28:07)
close to kind of the high school between the university and the high school. And it was this trail of two miles and we had this mile loop. And I remember one of the signature workouts was five mile repeats with 90 second rest. And I remember kind of at the peak of my college, know, me, myself and Erin, we would do these mile repeats at

Chris Detzel (28:25)
Mm-hmm.

Jose (28:35)
either just under five or above five minute, you know, per repeat. And I remember, you know, doing those types of workouts and really understanding now kind of the intersection between speed and endurance. And that's really where I felt like I started to thrive. Like now that rawness is going into like performance. And, and

Chris Detzel (28:38)
Wow. Yeah.

Hmm.

Sure.

Jose (29:04)
And, you know, really you could tell because the times really dropped. mean, now it's running low 16, 5 Ks. We ran cross country and those were five miles or eight Ks. You know, we were doing low 27 minutes. The 1500s, now we're doing like low four minutes. So that's where a lot of those times really started to cut down.

Chris Detzel (29:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (29:32)
But really, again, it's because now you have someone that really knows what they're doing. And now you have partners that are at your level that are pushing you to get faster, stronger. So really, especially that freshman year, to me, that's really where I think I honed in on just a lot of really knowledge.

Chris Detzel (29:36)
Yeah.

Jose (30:02)
understanding kind of what

you know, what the right level of speed versus speed endurance. But also, you know, understanding the importance of having people that are going to push you, right? Because a lot of times when you're out there by, I mean, you know, going back to that middle school, high school, when you're out there by yourself, you don't really have a gauge, you know? And I think now, I mean, even when I look at

Chris Detzel (30:19)
Yeah, of course.

No.

Jose (30:34)
You know, like in Flower Mound, Coach Cook, you know, I think part of why they have such a thriving high school program, you know, their girls team, I think they've won like three or four state titles. Part of why, you know, he's built such a strong program over there, think it's because of that culture, right? We're gonna...

Chris Detzel (30:51)
Well.

Jose (31:00)
We're going to train together. We're going to do things together. We're going to suffer together. And when you build that mentality, it's almost like you have people that buy into that mindset. So, you know, in college, again, I ended up, I remember, I believe it was my sophomore year, I ended up, you know, being on conference. And now, you know, people were talking about Southwestern. People were saying, you know, now we're

we're kind of competing, whereas before, you know, we were kind of the joke of the school. And, you know, I remember especially like during the summer, I remember one summer I stayed with Aaron in Brownsville to take some summer classes because his dad was a professor at UT Brownsville. And I remember just going out every day for an hour, you know, me, Aaron and I just...

running for an hour. We didn't even look at the distance, we didn't look at the pace. Yeah, we were just running for an hour. And that's also something I learned, right? Because this was before a lot of the GPS technology is time on feet. I really had no idea what time on feet was. So a lot of these concepts, I started to make sense and I started to really understand

Chris Detzel (32:03)
just ran for an hour.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jose (32:30)
kind of the art of running. And I started to understand, you know, where that intersection of endurance then intersects with speed, right? If I were to do it in a graph, if I were to quantify it, you you kind of have the Y axis and the X axis, and then you have one line over here and one line over here, right? So, and again, it's an art. mean, even with modern training, the whole double threshold training to me,

Chris Detzel (32:49)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jose (32:59)
that makes a lot of sense because you're pushing your endurance with that speed in order to replicate and simulate some race strategies, right? So again, those college years, that's where I really started to kind of sharpen that knowledge, which I didn't really have in high school or middle school.

Chris Detzel (33:07)
Yep.

Yeah.

Jose (33:27)
So again, I'm eternally grateful to both Coach Williams and Coach Smith for really providing that guidance and to me really setting that base that I think I needed because it's not that I didn't know. It's just, again, as an immigrant kid,

Chris Detzel (33:38)
for sure.

Jose (33:57)
I would say, and I would say a lot of immigrant kids, have this huge talent. If you think about it, I was born in San Luis Potosi, which is in central Mexico. It's 6,000 feet. So genetic wise, I think my ancestors, they've probably developed genetic wise a higher VO2. So a lot of these...

Chris Detzel (34:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (34:26)
immigrant kids or young people, come and they, I would say they have very good genes. They're just kind of not sharpened, right? Like, and what's interesting, I remember as a kid, you know, again, going back to soccer, I remember as a kid watching the World Cup coming to here, to the USA.

and watching that really good game in the Cotton Bowl. And then people were saying, you know, the US is gonna win the World Cup in 2010. And I remember how, you know, Nike was advertising. And I remember, you know, how people were comparing Freddy a dude to Pele. And, you know, what's so interesting, especially with soccer is I think part of the reason why that

Chris Detzel (35:16)
you

Jose (35:24)
you know, obviously didn't happen, is because, you know, that raw talent isn't really being developed. When you have this whole notion of pay for play, well, I mean, that's great for the kids that can afford it, but I would say a lot, you know, that rawness, that talent, you know, a lot of kids, you're missing a lot of that talent.

Chris Detzel (35:34)
Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

Jose (35:53)
I think part of going back to soccer, right? When I look at like France, know, part of why they've been so successful is they've been able to tap into that raw talent and then they've been able to sharpen it with some, you know, really good coaching. So.

Chris Detzel (36:06)
Tread.

So important.

mean, the US is rarely, men's anyways, is rarely any good. I mean, they might be decent, but they don't compare to almost a lot of these countries, right? So, and I think you've probably hit on a really good point. Anyways.

Jose (36:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Yeah. So, so,

so again, you know, with running, I mean, really, especially here in Texas, right? Football is king. but, know, cross country and track that, that, that has been an afterthought. and then you put that with, you know, some of the rawness, you know, I, I think, it's so interesting because I think there, there's so much potential, especially, I mean, you know, working in DISD, I really saw that rawness and I saw that potential.

Chris Detzel (36:33)
Yeah.

Jose (36:56)
a lot of times it's just not developed. So, me, that was kind of that story and that was kind of a big takeaway for me. But anyhow, I graduated college and...

Chris Detzel (36:58)
Yeah.

So I want to back

up because you sound very, never are you, have you talked about like, Hey, I won this thing or didn't, mean, you're just a very humble person, but I assume you're extremely competitive. And when you're in college, you're probably even more competitive because you're running with some really fast guys, right. And training pretty hard. And how is that competitiveness? know, like, did you, mean, you obviously had that where you just like, I'm just having fun. Just enjoying it.

Jose (37:35)
Well,

it's interesting you say that because, you know, again, we, up, we didn't know about mental health. We didn't know about, you know, any, any type of thing. So I remember in high school, you know, here I was just a immigrant kid. And I remember seeing teams like, you know, Plano, Highland Park. And I remember seeing

you know, kind of what they had, right? They came in this fancy bus. They had, you know, the latest shoes, I think at the time was like the Zoom Kennedys. And, you know, I remember just having this rage and I remember like I would run with rage. Like when I was running, like I remember, you know, they had races like at Norba Park and at Richland College. And I remember, you know, these

Chris Detzel (38:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (38:32)
Highland Park kids and I was like, there's no way this kid is going to pass me. So it was like, you know, mile two and the 5k. And I, mean, I, I would get to the point where like, I couldn't even breathe because I was just running with rage, right? Like I was running with like this, it was almost like this envy, right? This envy that, you know, this person has it all, but I still have to beat, beat that person.

Chris Detzel (38:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (39:02)
And

I also remember that raging poly-

Chris Detzel (39:05)
So you're pretty extre- you

are- that's also a sign that you are very competitive too. Despite all the other things that's going on from a rage standpoint, you're very competitive.

Jose (39:16)
Right, but I think it was just a lot of built up resentment and built up anger, which ultimately isn't healthy. Like I think about it now and I'm like, you know, there's no way that was healthy because it was like, you know, growing up being called names and especially, you know, growing up undocumented, you know, it was almost like,

Chris Detzel (39:24)
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jose (39:45)
you couldn't say anything, right? Like it was like living in the shadows, right? Like you're there, but you're not there, right? So to me, it was a lot of just built up anger that then I used and I used it in running. And I see that a lot, especially with some of these young kids, my time working in the schools.

Chris Detzel (39:50)
Hmm. Had to been tough. Yeah.

Sure.

Jose (40:13)
you know, I really understood some of the students and I understood them at the personal level because I kind of went through that journey. So yeah, I mean, you're right. It was a competitiveness, but I don't think it was a very healthy competitiveness, you know, because...

Chris Detzel (40:33)
So let's,

I agree with you. Like, I mean, it's so interesting that you said it. Now to talk about just like today, watching you run, I feel like, like races. Let's just say you run a race. I've seen you win, you know, local races or get close to winning or whatever. And you go all out. Like I'm looking at you and cruise even, you know, like maybe you two are, I know you guys run together sometimes, but

feel like you're just dead after every race. Sometimes it's after the summer, but I'm like, these guys just are killing themselves every single race. It's crazy to see it. I'm racing and I'll put it all out, but I'm not feeling like I'm sprinting at the end. I'm dying. You look like you've given it a thousand percent, literally.

Jose (41:25)
Yeah, yeah. you know, maybe it kind of brings back to those days, You're kind of people or creatures of habit. But I think overall, especially now, you know, some of that mind shift has shifted. But yeah.

Chris Detzel (41:31)
Yeah.

Of I would hope so. You've got a lot smarter

and you understand yourself better. You understand the circumstances and all of those things. Basically, what I've heard is that running has helped you in a lot of ways to kind deal with some of those anger or rage issues that you didn't know that you had, but that in a lot of ways helped you. There's several people along the way from...

from middle school, high school to college that helped you. And I think it's always good to have some of that help and it's awesome that you recognize that.

Jose (42:21)
Yeah, of course. again, you know, I am eternally grateful to both Coach Williams and Coach Smith. You know, I think they and again, I would say I was a difficult person at the time because I just had a lot of different things that were kind of building inside me. But also, you know, as a licensed professional counselor, I will say, Chris,

running is not therapy.

Chris Detzel (42:53)
One thousand.

Chris Detzel (42:58)
I'm still here.

Jose (42:59)
yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so I was just saying, you know, running is not therapy, you know, running is a great coping mechanism. You know, it's, it's something great for stress management. It's something great for, you know, building muscles and your cardiovascular and just kind of getting into connecting with, with nature, connecting with other runners. But, you know, I will say,

You know, if you have complex trauma, if you have, you know, an eating disorder, if you have some of these, some kind of going into some of these psychopathological things, you know, consider therapy. Like people, people shouldn't be tiptoeing around you because they're scared that you're going to lash out, you know, and, and,

Chris Detzel (43:45)
100%.

Yeah.

Jose (43:56)
With runners, and again, this is just a sidebar, with runners, there is a lot of issues that I've seen and a lot of times there's just this stigma, and I get it. I completely get it because I grew up with that stigma, but I will also say that you can get better. So to me,

Chris Detzel (44:17)
Sure.

Jose (44:25)
Running has, I mean, it has helped me tremendously. That's why I still do it. I've been doing this for 25 plus years. I have no plan on stopping, but I also understand the mental health aspect now that, you know, earlier me had no idea about.

Chris Detzel (44:33)
Yeah.

I'm glad that you brought that up. And, you know, I had a podcast with my brother and I don't think we got that clear, out. the reason, big reason why I wanted to have that podcast with him, I'm glad you brought it up and you were very articulate and clear about that, is that running is just one tool that you can use as a stress reliever to help you, but it's not going to fix, you know, what therapy can fix, right? You know, you have to talk it out and understand how to deal with some of these things that you're dealing with.

I'm so glad that you brought that up. Look, I mean, you dealt with it as a kid and you're probably running more so than, you just didn't know, right? But now we know, we're smarter. And I've seen it too, Jose. You see some of these people trying to, that had drug addiction or alcohol addiction and whatever led them to those kinds of things. They're out there, for example, there's some of the trail runners that are running hundred milers and they think,

they substitute whatever they had bad to run 100-milers or half marathons or marathons or whatever. so, although it's a tool and helpful at the moment from a stress standpoint, it's not gonna fix the issue or, you know, it doesn't help you completely deal with that. So thank you for bringing that

Jose (46:04)
Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, I say this more as a professional rather than as a runner. So back to my, or back to some of the journey. So I finished college, you know, now I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and I minored in religion. And then I didn't really know, you know, what to do with running, cause once you graduate, I mean,

College is very structured, right? You get your cross country schedule, you get your track schedule, and then in the summer, well, you you need to be running to get in shape for cross country and track. But once I graduated, it was like, well, what do you do? you know, and most college runners actually just end up quitting. you know, especially some of the guys I competed with.

Chris Detzel (46:39)
through it.

Jose (47:01)
super talented, know, super, just understood running, but then once they graduated, they just stopped. And to me, I was like, you know, this has helped me. as you said, this is a tool that has helped me. I don't wanna let go of this tool. So I graduated in 2006 and...

Chris Detzel (47:22)
Yeah.

Jose (47:28)
I didn't really know what to do so then I was like, well, let me register for a marathon. That sounds like good idea. People were talking about marathons so I was like, okay. And again, what was interesting is this was right before the recession of the 2000s. whenever the recession hit,

Chris Detzel (47:42)
You're going to another level.

2008. Yeah.

Jose (47:58)
it made running just boom, you know, because people were, and that's true with other recessions, right? Because this is a low budget or low money activity that people can do and you don't really need a lot of equipment or things like that to do it. Yeah, well, the market kind of made it, but yeah. And again, this was before, you know, any,

Chris Detzel (48:01)
Mm hmm.

Well now you do, but anyways.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah,

Jose (48:26)
GPS or any of that. mean I remember yeah, I

Chris Detzel (48:28)
super shoes, stuff like that.

Jose (48:30)
had I had the time X You know I had the Iron Man time X and that was kind of you know

Chris Detzel (48:35)
think I had the Nike Plus watch. I think that was the first

watch to come out. I don't know if it was back 2008. I think it was a little after that. Anyways, go ahead.

Jose (48:44)
Yeah, so I graduated in the spring and then I was like, well, what do I do? People were talking about marathons. So I thought it would be a good idea to run a marathon. And I didn't really know which marathon. So, you know, I knew that there was a marathon or several marathons in Texas. And I was like, well, why don't I register for the San Antonio Marathon? And back then it was called...

the San Antonio Marathon of the Americas. But the ish, or the, I didn't know it was a problem at the time, because I was pretty cocky. I was like, I just finished college, I ran in college, and again, at 21, you think you know everything, little do they know. But anyway, I just started to continue training like I did in college.

Chris Detzel (49:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jose (49:44)
I would do mile repeats, would do these tempos, would do these 60 minute runs. And then I was like, okay, I'm ready for the marathon. So come November, I drive, I think it was like six, seven hours to San Antonio. And I remember it started at the Alamo, finished at the Alamo Dome, they made a big deal. And there were some...

Kenyan runners that had come from Mexico. And you know, they had elite bibs. you know, I was like, well, they kind of look like some of the guys I competed with in college. So I was like, okay, let me, let me see if I can stick with them. Yeah. So here and again, keep in mind, I probably, you know, I, my long run was probably 10 miles. Like,

Chris Detzel (50:14)
RAREL

Yeah, yeah.

Let me stay with them.

man, I know where this is going. Go ahead.

Yeah,

exactly.

Jose (50:39)
you know, I was running 10 miles in like 60 minutes. So I was like, you know, okay, if I can do 10 miles, right. If I can do 10 miles in 60 minutes and I could just double it and then I'll, you know, I can close and, know, I should be doing the marathon and roughly 230. So that was kind of my thinking. I went, yeah, I went out and

Chris Detzel (50:43)
Yeah, it's fast, but that's 10 miles only.

Great logic.

Jose (51:05)
I remember passing the 20 mile marker and it was around two hours. Then I was like, okay, I only have, you know, about 30 minutes to go. And the guys that I was running with, they started speeding up. Like they went from like, you know, six minutes, because they were looking for the prize. Like they came to San Antonio for the prize money. Like that was their job, right? So that was like first and second place. So.

Chris Detzel (51:09)
Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Jose (51:33)
For them, they went from six minutes now to like 520s. And I did the reverse. So I went from, you know, six minutes to like 10 minutes. And I had no idea what was happening to my body. Like I had, I had like, I've never experienced, you know, the wall. I've never experienced a depletion of carbohydrates, you know, and back then, you know, we didn't really know about goose and stuff like that. We were just drinking Gatorade.

Chris Detzel (51:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jose (52:03)
You know, in practice, I remember in college, you know, they just had this big tub of Gatorade and that's kind of what you got. So I remember just being in this long street, having six miles to go, and I was just walking by that point. Like I wanted to drop out. But there was like, there's no way back, right? Like the only way back is to, yes, it's to keep going. But then, you know, nobody was passing me. Like it was just like deserted.

Chris Detzel (52:04)
some water.

No, I mean, just walk home. Yeah.

Jose (52:33)
And I was like, what is going on? Like I want to drop out, but I don't see a golf cart. So, well, so the last six miles took me 58 minutes. I ended up finishing in two hours and 58 minutes. And I remember, you know, finishing at the Alamodome and then just sitting there. I was like, you know, I started to question like, you know, why am I doing this? You know, what, what's the point of this?

Chris Detzel (52:46)
Still pretty impressive.

like a lot of people do.

Jose (53:03)
Yeah, but then it to me it was like it it it's like now I have to perfect it because because now you know what now you know how difficult it is right now you know that this is I mean it's almost like a challenge right and and again when you've been through you know

Chris Detzel (53:13)
Yeah, I like that.

Jose (53:31)
all these different obstacles, well now you know that this is just another obstacle to go through.

Chris Detzel (53:37)
Yeah, I love that. You know,

I hate to cut you off, but this could be up for part two because I'm so intrigued in this marathon journey that you have. But this has been excellent, Jose. I love this. I mean, what a great journey you have. And if you want to come back to part two to kind of tell the rest of that journey, I would love to have you on again, if you're interested. Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for

Jose (54:02)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Chris Detzel (54:06)
tuning into another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel and we just had Dr. Jose Lopez on our episode and what a great journey and we'll have him on again to finish up that journey. So thanks everyone and thank you Jose.

Jose (54:23)
Thanks.