In one of the most surprising races of this year’s U.S. outdoor championships, Krissy Gear ran a blazing fast final lap of the 3,000-meter steeplechase to run down Emma Coburn, the 10-time national champion in the event.
Gear, who is 23, ran her last 400 meters in 66.66 seconds and finished in 9:12.81, a personal best by almost 11 seconds. Coburn, 32, was second in 9:13.60, and Courtney Wayment, who also led Gear heading into the bell lap, was third in 9:14.63. The three will represent Team USA next month at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Gear admitted she was shocked to find herself passing Coburn in the final 100 meters.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I definitely had like a hiccup moment where I kind of like, felt really bad and didn’t want to do it. It’s Emma f -- king Coburn. I’m like, I want to see Emma win.”
The steeplechase is an event Gear had done only a handful of times in college to score points for the University of Arkansas. Instead, she focused on the 1500 meters, where she was fourth at the 2022 And her dog.
But when she graduated in 2022 and joined Northern Arizona Elite in Flagstaff, she told her coaches, Alan Culpepper and Jenna Wrieden, that she might want to try the steeple again.
From a technical standpoint, “she’s just beautiful,” Culpepper said, as he and Wrieden sat on a curb outside of Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, eating a late dinner of Qdoba and waiting for Gear to get through drug testing. “As soon as she even mentioned the steeple we were both like, ‘Absolutely.’ She’s just so athletic. We saw her go over the hurdles a few times and we were like, ‘Wow.’”
They weren’t worried when a gap opened up with a kilometer to between Coburn and Wayment, and Gear back in sixth. Nor was Gear.
“Alan told me, ‘Just slot yourself in fourth or fifth, I know you can close,’” she said.
The NAZ Elite coaching staff had no doubt she was good enough to make the team—if the race unfolded the right way.
“We were hoping it was just fast enough to eliminate other people,” Culpepper said. “But not too fast to where she wouldn’t be able to use her strong kick. It honestly played out really great for her. You could see with like a [kilometer] to go it started feeling really hard for her. Once she gets to 500 to go, she’s great.”
He said he was yelling at her with 200 meters to go, “You have another gear!” It’s a joke they make—intentionally or not—several times a week at practice.
Gear’s entire season has played out well. She hasn’t finished lower than third in a track race since her pro career started. But she had a difficult adjustment to Flagstaff early on.
She had taken 10 weeks off running after finishing her NCAA career. It’s tough to get back into shape at 7,000 feet of altitude, where Flagstaff sits. She went through a rough breakup, had some family struggles that she didn’t go into detail about, and drank too much.
“It was like, ‘I’m out of shape, I’m in this new place, the altitude is kicking my butt,’” she said. “I don’t know, I kind of got stuck in my own head instead of looking out and realizing what I had going for me.”
She turned to her teammates, especially Abby Nichols and Katie Wasserman, two other new recruits to NAZ Elite, and leaned hard into the training. “I was really depressed in the fall,” she said. “It was really nice to be like, ‘Okay, well, at least I can look forward to going to practice.’”
Culpepper and Wrieden brought her along slowly. For much of the year, she was taking a full day of rest once a week. She was doing only parts of workouts her teammates were doing at first, leaving plenty of room for her to develop. That’s hard to believe, considering she just moved to sixth all-time among U.S. steeplechasers.
CA Notice at Collection.
“You’ve got to refocus and reshape your mind into, like, ‘Okay, that was awesome. I want to use that energy, but I don’t want it to feel like that was the peak of all [my] emotional output,’’’ Culpepper said. “That reset is going to be the tricky part.”
Back in Flagstaff, NAZ athletes gathered to watch Gear’s race and celebrated over her final lap. She’s popular with her teammates and friends and happiest when she’s surrounded by people who love her, like her father and sister, who were in the stands in Eugene.
She Raced 18 Horses in an Ultramarathonand Won, Oats, who was back home in Flagstaff and makes frequent appearances at practice. “Oats is around a lot,” Culpepper said, in a way that made it seem like Oats is not necessarily his favorite team member. But if Oats is going to help Gear run 9:12 and make a World team, he sure as heck wasn’t going to object.
“Everyone roots for Krissy,” Culpepper said. “She’s so supportive—if you go back and watch the starting line of the race, you’ll see she’s clapping for everyone else being introduced. She’s that type of person.”
Published: Jul 09, 2023 9:25 AM EDT is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World Health - Injuries, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
