Lucia Muntean was a little apprehensive before joining Front Runners this past winter.  What would people think?  Would she be accepted?  Were the members going to be able to see past her sexuality?  Muntean is, after all, a straight woman who has been married for two years.  “How funny is that?” she laughs now, having been an integral part of the club for the last seven months.  “My concerns were laid to rest after the first workout.”

Since first approaching the team at an indoor training session in The Armory last January, Muntean has become a force to be reckoned with.  In addition to coming in first for the women's team in every race she has run since that time (beating most of the men while she was at it), Muntean has helped increase female presence at track workouts and has been a boom-box of a cheerleader for her fellow teammates.  And don't let her über-petite 5-foot, 95-pound frame fool you; she's tough as nails.  During June's Prostate 5-miler, a men's points race, Muntean ran opposite the course direction to goad runners toward faster times.  She decided to help Vet superstar Mark Mascolini by accompanying him for the last mile.  “When I started whimpering about a side stitch,” remembers Mascolini, now fondly, “she snarled ‘Suck it up!'”

With gargantuan running talent and a strong personality, Muntean has some definite ideas about training.  A 27-year-old graduate student in microbiology, she was a star runner at the high school and college levels, garnering considerable accolades at Shippensburg University, a small Division II school outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  In her freshman year, she helped the team finish sixth at the Nationals and followed that up with an even more impressive, podium-perching third-place her sophomore year.  But that proved to be her final year competing with the team.  Muntean decided not to run for Shippensburg her junior and senior years due to the arrival of a new coach.  “He and I didn't have the same training philosophies,” she says, snarkily.  “I didn't think everyone on the team should have an eating disorder to run.” 

For three years after that break, Muntean continued to run regularly on her own but then took a three-year hiatus from the sport before getting the racing itch again at the beginning of 2006.  “I knew I was too lazy to make myself do track workouts,” she admits, “so I began to look into running groups.”  After surfing the NYRR website for clubs that offered structured workouts but were not militant about racing, Muntean decided to check out Central Park Track Club.  “I knew they had super fast girls,” she says, “and I enjoyed the thought of training with them and really pushing myself to get back into shape.”  The team definitely scored high on the seriousness scale, but it left a little to be desired in terms of warmth and congeniality, though Muntean did manage to win over coach Tony Ruiz.  “He was pretty impressed that I was holding my own against his ‘elite' women,” she recalls, “and he talked to me about joining.”  But after a month of participating without getting to know anyone, Muntean stopped training with CPTC.  After trolling the Internet some more, she landed at a Harriers workout, only to discover that the club definitely earns its reputation as a drinking group with a running problem: “Talk about the complete opposite of CPTC,” says Muntean, “some days they would have a workout and other days a fun run but regardless they always would have a beer (or 2 or 3) afterwards.”

But as Goldilocks discovered after burning her tongue on a bowl of porridge or two, sometimes it takes a little trial and error to find something just right .  Initially drawn to the twice per week workouts offered by Front Runners, Muntean approached some team members last January at an Armory training session.  “It was clear to me from our very first conversation that she was serious,” says Front Runner coach Kelsey Louie.  “She said that she had a goal of breaking 7-minute pace in a 5-miler…and not only has she accomplished that, but she also ran that pace in a 10-K.  I wouldn't be surprised if she could do that in a half marathon.”  Muntean quickly warmed to Louie's training program, speaking so glowingly of Front Runners that she convinced her friend and fellow Columbia University lab rat Christina to join as well.  When first asked by Muntean to join the Front Runner workouts, Christina wondered aloud whether her friend knew the club was for gays and lesbians.  Her response?  “I replied to her (and to anyone else who asks) that Front Runners is for gay and gay-FRIENDLY people.”

Muntean credits Front Runners with rekindling her love for the sport, as the club has provided a sense of camaraderie that she had not felt since high school.  “It's really great to have people who can share in your PRs and understand the frustration of not hitting your goals, but who will also tell you not to give up,” says Muntean.  Collegial and disciplined by design, Muntean not only supported teammates at workouts throughout the winter but also raced like a champion at the Front Runner track meet, placing second overall in the women's mile with a time of 5:42. 

A short distance runner at heart, Muntean has focused on 4- and 5-mile races where her work on the track has paid off in spades.  Her four-mile time dropped from 28:00 in February to 26:17 in April (her pace sped from 7:00 miles to 6:34s).  Knowing she could go even faster and always happy to test her limits, Muntean came to June's Pride Run with a sense of purpose.  She blistered through the first four miles of the race in a faster time than her 4-mile PR and ended up chopping 3 minutes off her former 5-mile PR for a time of 32:05 (6:25 pace).  In addition to placing 11 th overall among female finishers, Muntean won the inaugural Steve Gerben award as the first female Front Runner to cross the line.

And Muntean plans to slash even more time off the clock—setting a goal of sub-25:00 for a 4-miler and, ultimately, of running a sub-5:00 mile.  Finding inspiration in the recent NASCAR comedy Talladega Nights, Muntean declares: “As Ricky Bobby says, ‘I wanna go fast!  I wanna go fast!'”  Her coach has nothing but faith in her.  “Once she sets a goal, she's determined to achieve it,” says Louie.  “So far, there's no reason to doubt that she will.”

 

Random Data

Provenance : Vietnam

Current Nabe : Spanish Harlem (“SpaHa in New York mag parlance')

Career Inspiration : Delved into microbiology after watching “And The Band Played On: “I thought the chick in the movie (who researched HIV and AIDS) was sooooo cool.”

Dream Job : Windsurfer in Aruba

Favorite Non-Running activity : Tae Bo

For the suggestion box : Volunteer pacers at races