UNMC’s ‘Walk to Olympics’ led researcher to keep moving

Alvaro Pinto did not like running.

As a child in Ecuador, he found running in the thin mountain air was almost exactly the opposite of exhilarating.

And when he came to Nebraska for his graduate studies, he saw no reason to change his mind.

But in April last year, as part of a campuswide fitness challenge called “UNMC Walks to the Olympics,” Pinto began to move.

“I had tried to walk or run before that, but I never got the push to keep doing it,” said Pinto, a research associate in orthopedic surgery.

But when he had a team of friends, when he was in a competition against the rest of the campus, it was a different story.

“Eventually, I had to buy new shoes,” he said. “Then I started running.”

And some while after that, “I started enjoying it.

“I don’t know exactly when that transition was, but I started liking to run.”

The Walk to the Olympics challenge is long over, and Pinto can’t even remember his final total — team captain Eileen Rooney clocked him at 781,357 total steps, which works out to approximately 390 miles — but he hasn’t stopped moving.

Since the challenge, he has completed a 5K race, as well as a 10K race, and he is currently in training for the Omaha Half-Marathon.

The campus program was a big part of his success, he said.

“I really enjoyed being part of a group.”

Even now, he meets up with fellow runners for his long training runs and races.

Although he’s completed two races, Pinto finds reasons to keep pushing himself.

“I felt great after the 10K, so I decided I can take the next step,” he said.

Pinto and his training partners are hoping for a 8:30 minute per mile pace, or even 8 minutes a mile over the 13.1-mile Omaha Half-Marathon course.

“Now, running is a habit,” he said. “I feel great, I’ve never been in better shape.”

Pinto and his friends already have signed up for this year’s Market-to-Market relay, a 20-stage, 78-mile run from Omaha’s Old Market to Lincoln’s Haymarket.

“When you sign up for a race, it keeps you going,” said Pinto, who thinks he will run somewhere between 13 and 15 miles as part of the Market-to-Market relay team.

And then a marathon?

“I don’t know right now,” he demurred. “That requires a lot of hard work and discipline.”

For some reason, that doesn’t sound like a problem.