Junior runs 400 laps in 32 hours on high school track

It wasn’t until mile 97 of his third attempt that Mingus Union High School junior Cristian Valdez knew for sure he was going to hit his goal of running 100 miles.

“I was at mile 85,” Valdez said, already farther than previous attempts. “I had done so much, but I genuinely didn’t think I was going to finish.”

Then he hit 90 miles, and the feeling just got worse. By then, his pace had slowed to about walking speed. Valdez was determined, though, to keep going.

In the end, Valdez said, his pace picked up and felt good when he crossed the mark.

After school on Friday, April 24, around 3:30 p.m., Valdez hit the track at MUHS and was running for about 32 hours. He ran through two sunsets without sleeping and finished about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 25.

The first 60 miles of his run around the track, Valdez ran in one direction, which ruined his form and hurt his feet, he said. Valdez said he found out running in one direction for that long can make one’s form deteriorate and hurt feet’s arches.

“Once I learned that every 10 miles, I would just switch,” he said.

First Attempts

Valdez journey to make it goes back to the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. He was inspired by watching videos of people running ultramarathons, events longer than a normal 26.2-mile marathon.

On Oct. 13, the Monday of fall break, “I attempted to run 100 miles in my front yard just in circles over and over,” he said. It was hard at first, because it was on an incline and it was a much shorter loop than the quarter-mile track at MUHS.

“I started at 6 a.m. and then I tapped out at mile 44,” he said. “I couldn’t anymore. My kidneys were hurting, everything just felt destroyed, especially since I hadn’t had any good training.”

A few weeks later, on Saturday, Nov. 1, he wanted to try again, this time on the Mingus track — without hills.

His friend, sophomore Ivan Bengson, was his pacer for about 23 miles overnight, which was the first time he ran with a pacer and through darkness.

“Say, if he wants to go a certain goal speed when he’s running, then he has me run with him, a little bit in front of him, so he can stay at my speed,” Bengson said.

“Also, he’s just there to keep me awake,” Valdez said. “Keep me entertained.”

Bengson said he brought him blankets and flashlights, too.

“I tapped out at mile 70, and then I went to work that same day,” Valdez said. “I work at Junipine Hotel Resort in Sedona.”

It was less intensive than his role now, he said, which includes chopping wood, but it was still hard to push past the soreness and exhaustion.

After the second attempt, he decided to focus on running with the cross country and track teams, and run the 100-mile when he felt better about his training and his running abilities.

Success

“Throughout the next few months, I did boost up my mileage a bit,” Valdez said. “There was a week that I ran 65 miles, like 10 miles every day, and then I started to get the mindset of, ‘by the end of this year, I am running a 100-miler.’”

While not traveling anywhere during his 100-mile run, he saw many sights, including the Northern Arizona University track team working on sprints and the Rotary Club of the Verde Valley’s walk-a-thon.

“A bunch of people came in and started walking while he was running,” said Preston Hepner, another one of his pacers.

“It raises money for those that can’t walk,” Valdez said. “So it’s like a little program where they send students to Kenya or Mexico to build wheelchairs or devices for just those that can’t walk.”

During the run, his friends brought him food, mainly snacks, to eat while he was on the track.

Valdez also had two other pacers, Angelo Farraro and Eli Doyle. Forthe 100-mile run, Ferraro ran about 21 miles with Valdez, Bengson ran about 23, Doyle ran 15 and Hepner ran 14. Valdez ran the rest solo.

“He didn’t eat anything real,” Hepner said. “It was just, like, grapes and candy.”

Valdez drank Gatorade and vitamin water, and said he ate a rice cake, too.

“I burned 9,000 calories,” he said. “I probably only ate 1,000.”

Valdez took about a week-long break from running afterward. His goal is to try another attempt later in the year.

“Now my goal is to just constantly PR on the 100,” he said.

The hardest part is finding the time to do it.

“So I’ll probably do 50-milers, marathon,” he said, “but this time, introduce speed.”