One of the most exciting things about road racing is that new people often come to the fore so it’s not a matter of the same individuals winning over and over again.

That was the case Sat., Feb. 22 in the San Jose Double, presented by IDT, as three runners who had never won the big prize in the Double before – Chandler Kemp, Tori Tyler and Charlet Gilbert -- emerged as the men’s overall champion, women’s overall champion and best age-graded performer respectively.

Chandler Kemp, 24, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., ran the 10K in 32:37 and the 5K in 15:45 to win this race in two parts separated by a recovery break in between with an aggregate time of 48:23. It was the first time he had ever run the Double.

Tori Tyler, 26, won the women’s race, running the 10K in 36:45 and the 5K in 18:30 for an aggregate time of 55:60. The first time she had run the Double was in Pleasanton, Calif., exactly two months earlier, when she finished second overall in the women’s race. Second and now first in her first two Doubles – not a bad beginning for her in this exciting, innovative new running event!

Charlet Gilbert of El Sobrante, Calif., won the Double Victory Cup for best age-graded performance. She ran the 10K in 46:16 and the 5K in 23:22 for an aggregate time of 1:09:38. This gave her an age-graded score of 85 percent. She finished fifth overall in the women’s race -- at age 62!

IDT, the main sponsor of the San Jose Double, was thrilled at the success of the event and the bright-faced enthusiasm of the participants. The company, whose health and wellness philosophy is reflected in the fact it has a gym and a health cafeteria for its Silicon Valley employees, had to be especially pleased that about 20 of its employees participated in the Double.

In addition to the Double Road Race, the race schedule on this sunny, weather-perfect Saturday included an individual 5K run and the Bob Anderson Kids’ Cup One-Mile. Bob Anderson, the founder and former publisher of Runner’s World magazine, originated the  Double Road Race™.

The Double, which Bob Anderson calls “the only race with a halftime,” is a world-class competition and family fun event rolled into one. A race with something for everyone, the San Jose Double drew the following comment from Megan Mozart, marketing director of the Double Road Race Federation: “One thing I can say is there is nothing nicer to look at than seeing people with a natural smile on their faces from having accomplished something meaningful to them. Many people today were talking at the starting line, last-minute butterflies in their stomachs, saying things like ‘I don’t know if I can finish.’ But they did finish and it was great to see the smiles on their faces. That was the most exciting thing of the day as far as I was concerned.”

Bob Anderson himself was in the race, and he placed second in the 65-69 age group. He also kept his streak alive of competing in every Double held since the event made its national and world debut in Pleasanton, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2012 – that was nine Doubles ago! The San Jose Double was the 10^th Double ever held and the first one on the 2014 schedule. At least 10 more are scheduled for this year – go to DoubleRoadRace.com for the complete schedule.

While happy smiles abounded at the San Jose Double, the two runners who had reason to smile the most because they ran the fastest were the men’s and women’s overall champions -- Chandler Kemp and Tori Tyler!

Chandler, who’s a graduate student at Stanford University, working on a Masters degree in Energy Resource Engineering, grew up in Haines, Alaska near Juno. A fine runner in high school, he won the two-mile in the Alaska small schools division (400 students or less) in 2008 with a time of 9:44.

He then attended Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., for four years, where he competed for the school in both cross-country and track – his PR’s are 14:31 for the 5000 and 30:33 for the 10,000 on the track. When he wasn’t doing some impressive things as a runner, he was doing some notable things in the classroom, graduating from that prestigious Ivy League school with a degree in Physics. He returned to Alaska for a year to work at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, then came to the San Francisco Bay Area last September to enroll as a graduate student at Stanford.

Now running for the New Balance Silicon Valley Running Club, he heard about the Double from Chantelle Wilder, who had won the women’s division at the Pleasanton Double this past December.

He entered the race with only a week to go and was clearly the class of the field in San Jose, leading the 10K right from the start, with only one other runner – 4:06 miler Darius Terry from Scottsdale, Ariz. – challenging him for the first half of the 10K.

“Then he started to fade away,” Chandler said later, “I was still feeling strong, so I tried to speed it up a little bit during the last 5K – I think I had a little bit of a negative split.”

Chandler would finish the 10K in 32:37, giving him a 50-second cushion over Darius Terry, who ran 33:27. Adam Roach, 29, of Monterey, Calif., who’s becoming something of a veteran of the Double – this was his fourth Double! – came across the line third in the 10K with a time of 33:39.

Fifty seconds is an awful lot of time to make up in the 5K of the Double; thus Chandler Kemp’s victory in the Double was now something of a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, he concentrated on not looking at the 5K as some kind of “victory lap” or changing anything he had planned to do.  

“The 5K went really well,” he said later. “I led from the start (he was by himself after the first quarter mile), ran hard for the first mile, then tried to keep a steady pace going up a gradual hill from a mile and a quarter to a mile and three quarters. Then I picked up the pace on the downhill and picked it up even further over the last mile.”

He reached the finish line in 15:45 to give him a combined time of 48:23. Darius Terry ran the 5K in 16:40 to finish second overall with an aggregate time of 50:08. And Adam Roach ran the 5K in 16:47 to finish third with an aggregate time of 50:26.

After his victory, Chandler said of the Double, “I really enjoyed it. I think it’s fun to have a halftime and be able to interact with people a little bit. I was really excited to win – it’s always exciting to win a race, especially with so many people in it.”

Tori Tyler, who won the women’s race in San Jose, is originally from Los Altos, Calif., but now lives in Danville, Calif., and works for the Antioch Unified School District as a child nutrition specialist. Now 26, she ran in high school, then at Chico State University, where she graduated with a degree in nutrition and food science, and at the University of Washington, where she got a Master’s degree in the same field.

An experienced runner, Tori has personal bests of 16:29 for the 5K (track), 34:47 for the 10K (track), 1:19:03 for the half-marathon, 3:02 for the marathon (in a trail race), and she’s even run 7:21 in a 50-mile race, the North Face Endurance Challenge in Madison, Wis., in 2011, finishing second woman overall – after another female competitor came from behind and outkicked her by 2-3 seconds at the very end! (“I certainly wasn’t kicking,” Tori looks back, “I was just trying to finish.”).

In the San Jose Double, Tori basically went out and ran her own race in the 10K. She kept pace with a male runner early on, but there were no female competitors with her and she didn’t look back to see if there were any close behind her. She finished the 10K in 36:45 to give her a 45-second lead. Tania Morimoto, 24, of Mountain View, Calif., finished the 10K in 37:24 to place her second in the women’s division, and San Jose’s Rosa Gutierrez, who is 50, or about twice as old as Tyler and Morimoto, finished third in the 10K with a time of 40:43.

After the 10K, Tori Tyler had reason to be confident she would win, but she doesn’t consider herself very good over the shorter distances and wasn’t going to spare any effort in the 5K.

“I feel like I’m more of strength runner,” she said afterwards, “so I was concerned about the shorter distance of the 5K. I didn’t want someone to outkick me, so even though I had a 45-second lead I ran the 5K pretty hard to make sure I kept the lead. I’m not that confident of my 5K. I’m more of an endurance and strength runner, so I feel the longer the distance the better for me.”

Tori was basically on her own again in the 5k, with no women beside her, and finished the 5K leg in 18:30 for an aggregate time of 55:60. Tania Morimoto wasn’t as far behind this time, finishing the 5K in 18:38 for an aggregate time of 56:03, which placed her second in the women’s race. Rosa Gutierrez retained her third-place position by running the 5K in 20:26 to give her an aggregate time of 1:01:10.

After her victory on Saturday, Tori said of the Double, “I think it’s a great event. I knew Bob Anderson when I was growing up, or I knew of him. I’d often see him running in my neighborhood, I didn’t know who this man was that I’d see running in my neighborhood, until my father told me he was the guy who started Runner’s World.

“Last December I was looking online for races and I saw this 10K-5K event called the Double, which I hadn’t heard of before, and I saw that it was started by Bob Anderson. So I thought it would be a great race to run since I’m preparing for this year’s Boston Marathon and a great opportunity to connect with Bob Anderson, since I’d never met him or gotten to know him personally.

“We both have the same passion for running and it’s nice to be able to meet somebody who shares your enthusiasm for something.”

It’s also nice to finish second and now first in your first two Doubles! []

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