He started running to train for soccer.

He never expected to find his new love.

Safety Program Manager Oscar Garcia began running in his freshman year of high school, but he never imagined his first track race would lead him into a professional running career.

“For my first race, what was surprising to me was not the fact that I didn’t win,” Garcia said. “Prior to this, I was chubbier, and I would always get last or second to last, so I didn’t expect to win, but then my teammates and my coach afterwards told me ‘You did so good, for it being your first race the time that you ran was really good,’ that surprised me a lot.”

Community has always been a primary motivator in Garcia’s sport endeavors. His first sport was soccer, which he had been playing since childhood, and served as a way for him to connect to those around him.

“My dad really loves soccer to this day, and so do my uncles and my cousins,” Garcia said. “[Soccer] was just a way to build that community and a way for us to have fun, to interact.”

Garcia played from childhood to high school, at which point he decided to try out for the track team during his freshman year, originally to improve his performance for soccer.

“What drew me initially was, honestly, I just wanted to get in shape for soccer,” Garcia said. “Then I kind of found out I was good. I won my first race, and that just sparked something else in me.”

Garcia won his first race a year into his running career at MacArthur High School, which was around the same time he decided to shift his focus entirely on cross country and track.

“I still had my doubts of ‘maybe I should go back to soccer,’” Garcia said. “But it was after a year where I said, ‘okay, I’m gonna do this,’ and I actually started taking it seriously.”

Living up to this commitment, Garcia ran Division 1 track, cross country and indoor track at Houston Christian University, where he had to learn how to “grow up” and juggle his various commitments.

“[As an athlete], college is harder in some senses, because you’re having to train, go to school and work a job, so it does limit a lot of things,” Garcia said. “You do get that community, but you can’t experience everything that college has to offer. But I mean, it teaches you to manage yourself well.”

At HCU, Garcia ran alongside Social Worker Stephanie Aguilar on the track and cross country teams. They didn’t become immediate friends, but got closer as time went on.

“He was very quiet at first,” Aguilar said. “And then when we, and all of our teammates, would go to the cafeteria and eat breakfast together and we would have little debates and arguments, that’s when I really started to notice, ‘okay, this guy here, he’s a thinker, he thinks very deeply about things.’ That’s kind of how I first started realizing, ‘okay, I think we click as friends.’”

Although they are distance runners, Aguilar and Garcia were still expected to run track along with the other cross country runners. This led the long distance team to have a closer relationship, even during track season.

“The distance runners, since we ran cross country, we had to wake up, do those early mornings, so we kind of bonded together in a different way,” Aguilar said. “So even during track season, when we were with the whole track team, we still are closer, because we’ve been training together all year, all summer.

So the community Garcia had loved in soccer? He found it again. But this time, it was even better.

“My friends kept me [running],” Garcia said. “I’ve found an even bigger community [in running], especially as I’ve gotten older. Not saying that there isn’t one in soccer. I just never experienced that as an adult.”

For Garcia, the transition from running at the collegiate level to the professional was simple. He had simply always known he was going to run.

“I already knew the whole time,” Garcia said. “Even though I like to learn, I didn’t really want a traditional job. So I knew that I went into school seeking running, and even when I graduated, I just felt like I wasn’t done yet.”

After graduating in 2017, Garcia got a full-time job working with bilingual students at Hambrick Middle School, his old middle school, while still training on his own. Although Garcia enjoyed his job, he still felt as if he had to make a choice between running or being a teacher.

“One of my old band directors told me, ‘Hey, dude, you can be a real great teacher, or you could be a real great runner,’” Garcia said. “‘Either way, whatever you want to do, make sure it makes you happy, and I’ll support you, but you got to decide you’re not getting any younger.’”

But then, COVID-19 hit. Now, Garcia was able to focus on his running career like never before.

“Everything shut down,” Garcia said. “I was still getting paid, but I didn’t have to go to work. So I got to train like a professional. During that time, I just decided I couldn’t go back to my job because I needed that type of structure in my life.”

After quitting his job, Garcia moved to The Woodlands and joined Team Green Running, where he trained with new team members, including Cameron Laverty. Laverty and Garcia grew to become more than teammates, but close friends.

“It was really nice to have someone around my age who had similar interest, not just in running but outside of that,” Laverty said. “My first impression of [Garcia] was that he was very dedicated to the sport. We had a close bond to where we were able to push each other and really excel both of our talents further than we thought we would’ve been able to.”

With Team Green, Garcia’s coach, Dan Green, showed Garcia a “whole other level” to what his running career could look like.

“I got to see the business side of running,” Garcia said. “I got to see how to get sponsors, like a professional. He was paying me to stay in hotels, I got to meet professionals, and meet good coaches.”

During his time with Team Green, Garcia had a packed schedule, needing to juggle his training with his job at Fleet Feet, as well as his commitments as a coach for Team Green.

“It’s just that I had multiple jobs,” Garcia said. “I was training in the morning, and I would go work, and then I would go coach with [Green], and then I would train again. So, I would wake up at six or seven, sometimes even earlier, and I wouldn’t be done with my day until 8 p.m.”

But after four years with Team Green and his coach, reality hit.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’m starting to realize unless I’m running like Usain Bolt, I’m not gonna be able to make a living off of just solely running,” Garcia said. “ I still feel like I can train longer. But as far as the aspirations I had where I was, ‘I think I could be a world class athlete,’ I don’t know about that anymore. It’s hard for me to not give that up.”

Garcia joined Bellaire this school year as a Safety Program Manager, but he hasn’t given up on his passion for running, and still trains with a private coach. He aims to invoke that same passion in students at Bellaire by first getting his physical education certification.

Although he can’t coach as a Safety Program Manager, he still wants to take on a more active role in promoting health, both mental and physical.

“I would like to be more involved in just promoting healthy habits,” Garcia said. “I think when people think of exercise, they think like, ‘I gotta hurt, I gotta feel pain.’ That’s not what it is. Running is not about killing yourself every day. It’s about, ‘Okay, here’s our limit, here’s our ceiling. Let’s see how close we can get to the ceiling. But we’re not going to kill ourselves.’”

But even with his new job, Garcia hasn’t given up his commitment to running and improving.

“I just feel like I’m not done yet,” Garcia said. “I’ve always thought in the back of my mind, ‘hey, I’m still young. I can still get faster,’ even to this day, which is why I’m still competing. This is what I love to do. This is what I want to wake up doing every day, whether I make money or not, I want to do this. I don’t think I can picture myself not running. I think that will make me even sadder.”