GUILDERLAND — Christine Myers of Altamont didn’t get serious about running until she was a senior at Guilderland High School — “relatively really late,” she says — but she’s serious now.

At 20, she’s a powerhouse on the women’s cross-country and track teams at The College of Saint Rose, 10 seconds away from qualifying to compete for the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II national title in the 10,000 meters, or 10K, race.

She is ranked second in track and field’s Northeast 10 conference for the 10,000-meter, or 6.2-mile, race. She is ranked second in the history of Saint Rose women runners in the 10K.

On April 14, Myers placed first in the 5K at the Bronco Classic at the State University of New York College of Technology at Delhi. And in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the eighth annual American International College Yellow Jackets Invitational, also in April, she not only came in first in the 10,000-meter (6.2-mile) race but also broke the meet record by 20 seconds.

On May 10, at the State University of New York College at Geneseo, she will try to shave 10 seconds off her time, to qualify for nationals. The qualifying time is 36:36, and Myers’s best to date is 36:46.

“In a six-mile race, 10 seconds isn’t a lot,” Myers says.

Myers is doing “an amazing job,” says her coach, Raymond Putnam. Of the race at Springfield, he said that Myers won it by over three minutes in a strong headwind that showed her down by at least 45 seconds.

“Christine is just starting to come into her abilities,” Putnam said. “She’s just getting a lot faster.” She graduates next year, he said, “which makes a coach cry.” He said that, if she had two more years to go, “I think we’d definitely have a national champion.”

He hopes that, next year, she will qualify for nationals and be named an All-American.

Myers, who wants to be an attorney, has a third year next year at Saint Rose, and will then begin studies at Albany Law School.

Myers estimates that she runs 60 to 70 miles a week. She hasn’t missed a day of running in three years.

Running is relaxing for her, whether it’s through the city after classes or back home on the roads around Indian Ladder Farms. “That’s my time to shut the world off and enjoy and appreciate all the little things,” she said.

Myers also writes and performs slam poetry.

Her greatest influence has been teacher-turned-administrator Ann Marie McManus, who was Myers’s ninth-grade history teacher.

“She’s just one of those people who taught me to pull through the tough times and keep going, keep striving,” said Myers.

Myers says she has a tattoo on her ribcage of the last line from a poem that McManus shared with her, “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann.

It reads, “Strive to be happy.”