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UjENA FIT Club 100 Interesting Running Articles

Best Road Races and the UjENA FIT Club is publishing 100 articles about races, training, diet, shoes and coaching.   If you would like to contribute to this feature, send an email to Bob Anderson at bob@ujena.com .  We are looking for cutting edge material.

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Pleasanton: The Masters of Double Racing
Posted Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
By David Prokop Pleasanton, Calif., may be a quiet, relaxed community across the bay from San Francisco, but where Double... Read Article
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Champions of the Double
Posted Monday, September 15th, 2014
Peter Mullin has taken Double Racing® by storm. He broke the 60-64 age group world record in the first Double... Read Article
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Double Racing Has Truly Arrived!
Posted Monday, September 22nd, 2014
by David Prokop (Editor Best Road Races) Photo: Double 15k top three Double Racing® is a new sport for... Read Article
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Pritz's Honor
Posted Sunday, May 11th, 2014
By David Prokop, editor Best Road Races The world’s most unusual race met the world’s most beautiful place, in the... Read Article

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Best Double Yet!
Saturday, August 24th, 2013
Liudmila Stepanova, Christine Kennedy, Malcolm Richards and a 16-year-old runner to watch named Jose Pina Jr. shine at the San Jose Double
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by David Prokop

The Double Road Race™ returned to the San Francisco Bay Area today where it was born less than eight months ago, and the San Jose Double proved to be – in many ways – the best Double staged thus far!

The competition was outstanding – with Russia’s Liudmila Stepanova looking totally dominant in the women’s race, although she didn’t improve on her world record as she had originally planned, Christine Kennedy winning the Double Victory Cup (as usual) for best age-graded performance, Malcolm Richards coming out on top in a very competitive men’s race, and 16-year-old Jose Pina Jr. destroying the under-19 age group record with a performance that placed him near the top of the men’s overall results!

The race organization was excellent – with a larger Recovery Zone than ever before. The course featured a beautiful industrial park setting at the start-finish line and scenic rural roads with horses and cattle on either side and towering picture-postcard hills nearby during the body of the race. A live band performed music after the race as competitors awaited the awards ceremony. And the response of the more than 500 runners who participated in this Double was never more positive. So many of them voiced the heartfelt feeling that they couldn’t wait to run the next Double.

Bob Anderson, creator of the Double and a competitor in the San Jose race himself, said afterwards, “I would say this is the best Double we’ve ever put together.”

Liudmila Stepanova, a petite 5’1”, 104-pound endurance machine from Cheboksary, Russia, had been hoping to improve on her women’s world record in the Double set just 13 days ago in Indianapolis – 52:38.6 (35:21 10K and 17:12 5K). However, tired from training and travel, she didn’t even approach her record, but she still was the most dominant runner in the race, male or female, taking the lead in the women’s race right from the start in both the 10- and 5K, and never looking back.

Barry Anderson, Bob Anderson’s younger brother and the former women’s track coach at Kansas State University, said of Stepanova: “She just looks so good when she runs – she covers the ground so efficiently. No wasted motion, no head bobbing up and down. I call her running style businesslike – she’s out there to get the job done and if you’re going to beat her, you’re going to have to work for it.”

Comments and Feedback
run Thanks David for writing this article. Congrats to all our finishers yesterday. It was a good day for racing. Nice meeting so many of you....
Bob Anderson 8/25/13 9:16 am
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Stepanova, who celebrated her 30th birthday only last Sunday, ran 36:22 for the 10K and 17:51 for the 5K, giving her an aggregate time of 54:13, almost a minute faster than the second- and third-place runners. In this case two women, Kaitlin Gregg of Davis, California, and Chantal Wilder, a Canadian native now living in San Francisco, finished with the exact same aggregate time – 55:12! But Gregg was awarded second on the basis of a faster 10K time, which is the tiebreaker in the Double in a situation like this. Gregg ran the 10K in 37:04, while Wilder ran 37:12. In the 5K Wilder was clocked in 18:00, Gregg in 18:08.

The great Masters runner Christine Kennedy of Los Gatos, Calif., who’s 58, ran the 10K in 39:52 and the 5K in 19:49, giving her an aggregate time of 59:41. That placed her fourth overall in the women’s race – and she won the Double Victory Cup still again for the best age-graded performance with a 97.29 percent score. Five Doubles have been held in the US thus far (Pleasanton, Overland Park, Denver, Indianapolis and now San Jose); Christine Kennedy has won the Double Victory Çup in four of them!

Monica Jo Nicholson of Salinas, Calif., finished fifth overall among women, running the 10K in 40:34 and the 5K in 19:40 for an aggregate time of 1:00.14.   

Originally the San Jose Double looked like it was going to be a head-to-head matchup between Stepanova, the current recordholder, and Molly Pritz, the previous recordholder, but Pritz, who’s from Boulder, Colo., had to withdraw from the race earlier in the week due to a leg injury. Another outstanding female runner who was entered in the San Jose Double but couldn’t run due to injury was Michelle Meyer of San Francisco, who had finished second in the women’s race in the Pleasanton Double last December, the first Double ever held in America.

In the men’s division of the San Jose Double, Malcolm Richards of San Francisco opened a lead after the first mile and a half of the 10K, increased it heading up a gradual uphill approaching the two-mile mark and finished the opening leg in 31:49, eight seconds ahead of Chris Chavez of Burlingame, Calif., who clocked 31:57. Third in the 10K was Adam Roach of Monterrey, Calif., who finished in 32:01. Ivan Medina of Hayward, Calif., finished fifth in the 10K, 32:31, and C.M. April, also of Hayward, finished fifth, 33:29.

Medina said in an interview during the recovery break that he planned to go out hard in the 5K – and that’s exactly what he did, pushing the pace for the first mile and a half. Then Richards and Chavez passed him, with Richards, in the leader’s yellow jersey, taking the lead, Chavez right behind him, as they proceeded up the gradual uphill approaching two miles and down the somewhat longer downhill on the other side.

Richards would finish the 5K in 15:29, Chavez in 15:32, with Richards winning the race on aggregate time, 47:18, compared to the 47:29 posted by Chavez. Adam Roach finished the 5K in 15:54 to finish third on aggregate time, 47:55. Ivan Medina hung on well after his aggressive start to finish the 5K in 16 minutes flat, giving him fourth place on aggregate time, 48:31. C.M. April ran the 5K in 16:32 to go with his 33:29 10K, which placed him fifth on aggregate time – 50:01.

One of the biggest stories to come out of the San Jose Double – if not the biggest! – was the performance of Jose Pina Jr., who, at the age of 16, was the sixth-place finisher overall in the men’s division. In running the 10K in 33:41, his personal best for the distance, he also set a personal best for the 5K, in the opening 5K of that leg! He then came back to run 17:07 in the 5K, giving him an aggregate time of 50:46, absolutely obliterating the previous under-19 age group record in the Double, which had stood at 53:14.  To provide some perspective on Jose Pina Jr.’s achievement in San Jose, keep in mind that his aggregate time was four seconds faster than the aggregate time of Matt Duffy, former Brown University standout, who had run so impressively in finishing fourth overall in Pleasanton!

The San Jose Double was a very successful family outing all around for the entire Pina family, who happen to live in San Jose. Jose Pina Sr. won the 40-44 age group with an aggregate time of 53:55 (35:51/18:04), which placed him 10th overall in the men’s division, and the youngest Pina, Omar, who’s 12, won the Bob Anderson Kids’ Cup Mile in 5:53! In second place was Bob Anderson's grandson Owen Wall.  7-year-old Owen (whose birthday was today) finished second in 7:07.

The girls winner in the Kids’ Cup Mile was Cynthia Gon who ran 7:08.

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Double Road Race