To ace marathoner Daniel Tapia, who grew up just down the road from San Juan Bautista in Salinas and now calls Prunedale home, the San Juan Bautista Double is almost a “home game” – and he plans to make it a good one!

In an interview about three weeks ago, the 5’9”, 140-pound runner with a boyish face that makes him look much younger than his years (he’s 26), said of today’s race: “A world record would be nice, but I’m going there to win and to prepare for the Amsterdam Marathon (in the Netherlands) on October 20.”

Daniel finished second in the Pleasanton Double in Pleasanton, Calif., last Dec. 23, the first Double Road Race™ ever held in America, so San Juan Bautista marks his return to the Double and he’s familiar with the strategic intricacies and physical demand of the event.

While he didn’t come right out and say he was shooting for the world record in the Double at San Juan Bautista, he said, “I don’t know what the world record is, but I plan to run fast.”

When we told him the world record for the Double was now 44:31.09, set by Kenyan Julius Koskei when he won the Indianapolis Double on August 11 by running the 10K in 29:48 and the 5K in 14:43, Daniel responded,” Given the times that you’ve told me right now, I think it’s possible (to set a new record).” Daniel has personal bests of 29:30 for the 10K (run in the first 10K of a half-marathon!) and 14:12 for the 5K. When he envisions/hopes he could run in the San Juan Bautista Double is under 30 minutes for the 10K and something in the 14:30s in the 5K. That would put him squarely in world record territory. Daniel posted an aggregate time of 46:05 (31:01/15:03) in finishing second at Pleasanton, but he should be in much better condition and more rested for this race today.

By the way, Daniel comes into the San Juan Bautista Double as a full-fledged “International,” a term that has great significance in athletics, since he was part of a three-man US team (along with Jeffrey Eggleston of Boulder Colo., and Carlos Trujillo of Middleton, Idaho) that represented this country in the World Marathon Championships in Moscow, Russia on August 17.  Danny was named to the team only 30 days before the race, which didn’t give him sufficient time to prepare properly; nevertheless, on a day when it was 80 degrees for the whole race with no shade on the course, Daniel ran a respectable time of 2:18:32 to finish 27^th – second American in the race (Eggleston finished 13^th in 2:14:30, Carlos Trujillo finished in 2:22).

Good luck Daniel in San Juan Bautista next Saturday...you know the course. It is fast and I think you have a shot at the world record!!!!
Bob Anderson 9/20/13 10:11 am

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Of course, three months earlier, Daniel had achieved national notoriety by being the second American to finish at this year’s Boston Marathon. Running a smart, steady race, he moved up through the field beautifully in the latter stages of the race to finish in 2:14:30, a personal best. 

And 4 1/2 months before that he had registered probably his greatest achievement to date as a runner when he won the California International Marathon (CIM) in Sacramento, Calif., running 2:15:30 on a miserable rainy day where competitors ran into the wind for the first 15 miles. His victory at Sacramento broke an African stranglehold on the race that dated back to 1998!

Daniel himself regards his CIM victory as his best performance ever – and indeed more satisfying than what he did at Boston. “Just because I would take a win over a good time any day,” he explains. But then he adds, “If it had been nice weather in Sacramento, I might have run even faster than I did at Boston.”

Four days after winning at Sacramento, he took his final exams at the Monterrey School of Law – and passed! He subsequently took the California bar exam in August and will receive the results in November.

“I’m going to keep focusing on running for now, and I’ll pursue my legal career when the time is right,” he says.

Daniel Tapia was raised in Salinas, he played soccer from age 6 to 18, his family owns Martha’s Family Restaurant in Prunedale (Daniel worked at the restaurant even as he was going to college and law school), and his aunt owns the well-known Giant Artichoke restaurant in Watsonville … is there a person in this region who hasn’t seen it?  Daniel is now training at altitude in Colorado Springs, Colo., with the American Distance Running Project, his coach in Colorado is Scott Simmons, but Daniel’s roots are right here in the Salinas-San Juan Bautista-Monterrey area.

Today the local boy who’s making good as a runner is competing in the San Juan Bautista Double. On October 20 he will be running in the Amsterdam Marathon, which is flat, fast and an awful long way from California. To show you how far Daniel has come as a runner, his first goal at Amsterdam will be to improve on his personal best of 2:14:30, set at Boston. His second goal would be to get down into the 2:13 range in the marathon. And his third goal?

“If I was having a really good day, to run 2:12 or faster,” he says.