A rising new star in Double Racing®, Jovanny Godinez, 23, of Hayward, Calif., was the runaway winner of the Double 15K at the San Jose Double Racing® Festival, Sat., Feb. 21, as he ran the 10K in 30:23 and the 5K in 15:16 for an aggregate time of 45:39.

This was only one minute, 15 seconds off the world record, and the San Jose course is considerably tougher than the Pleasanton circuit where the record was set.

Godinez had come out of nowhere – or so it seemed! – to finish third in the Double 15K at the third annual Pleasanton Double Racing® Festival in December behind world-class runners Tesfaye Alemayehu, an Ethiopian now living in Antioch, Calif., who won the race, and Julius Koskei of Kenya, who was second at Pleasanton but is the world record holder. Godinez posted an aggregate time of 46:06 at Pleasanton, but of greater significance he completely surprised the two Africans by his performance in the concluding 5K stage of that race. Godinez clocked 14:56.7 to edge Alemayehu by 1.5 seconds, and he finished 8.2 seconds ahead of Koskei, who had set the men’s world record of 44:24.01 in the Double 15K the previous year in Pleasanton when he ran the 10K in 29:45.20 and the 5K in 14:38.81.

At San Jose on Saturday, the slender Godinez, his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, led both stages from start to finish. Running 4:54 per mile pace in the 10K, he finished two minutes, six seconds ahead of Darius Terry, who’s also 23 and lives in San Jose, as they ran 30:23 and 32:29 respectively. Terry, incidentally, is a fine runner in his own right – an All-American in the 1500 meters when he attended Arizona State University, the San Jose native won two Double 15K’s last year (San Jose and San Juan Bautista). The third-place finisher in the 10K was Alemayehu Bedada, 32, an Ethiopian now living in San Jose (he’s not related to Tesfaye Alemayehu), who ran 33:10.

His victory in the Double now assured, Godinez ran the concluding 5K in 15:16, or 4:55 pace, to win by more than three minutes on aggregate time! Bedada finished second in the 5K, clocking 15:47, Terry was third in 15:53, but the latter retained his second-place position on aggregate time, 48:23 to 48:58.

Jovanny Godinez, who’s 5’7”, 122 pounds, is a graduate of San Fernando High School in the Los Angeles area, he attended Adams State University in Colorado, where he ran 29:34.5 for the 10,000 meters, and he’s not only fast, he promises to get much faster. Remember, he’s only 23.

From the outset Double Racing® had been billed as a world-class and family fun event, and the San Jose Double Racing® Festival certainly was both. While Jovanny Godinez was running such an outstanding Double at the front end of the race – he actually won the Double Victory Cup for the best age-graded performance in the Double 15K, his aggregate time of 45:39 at age 23 translating to a 90.14 score (he became the youngest runner ever to win the Double Victory Cup in the Double!) – the San Jose Double Racing® Festival had runners aged five to 90 participating, there was a very festive atmosphere to the event, and the women’s winner of the Double 15K, Maggie Yount, 31, of Portola Valley, Calif., set a world record of another sort!

Pushing a stroller with her infant child in it, she ran the 10K in 37:29, finishing one second ahead of her friend Kris Paaso, 44, of Menlo Park, Calif., to set a new world 10K stroller record – is that what they call it?  Maggie and Kris then ran the 5K together, finishing in the same time, 19:08, with Maggie pushing the stroller and child again. Thus, Maggie won on aggregate time, 56:38 to 56:39, and her time becomes the new Double 15K world record while pushing a stroller.

Another’s Masters runner, 51-year-old Rosa Gutierrez of San Jose, was the third-place finisher in the women’s race. She ran the 10K in 40:47 and the 5K in 20:13 for an aggregate time of 1:01:01.

There were two other Double races on the program in San Jose on Saturday – the Double 5K, consisting of a 3K followed by a 2K, and the Bob Anderson Kids’ Cup 1½ Mile, in which competitors 13 and under run a mile and then, after a rest break, a half-mile.