Come-From-Behind Victories in San Juan Bautista

Bihama Vedaste and Julita Baker each had time to make up in the second leg to emerge as the men’s and women’s champions in the Double 15K at the San Juan Bautista (Calif.) Double Racing Festival, Sat., Sept. 19.

Vedaste, who’s 25 and lives in San Jose, Calif., posted an aggregate time of 50:03 to win his first Double in his first start in the event.

Baker, who’s 33 and lives in San Ramon, Calif., had an aggregate time of 59:06 to win her second Double 15K in a row – she had also won the Double 15K in the San Jose Double Racing Festival, Sat., Aug. 22.

This is the first time ever both the men’s and women’s winners in a Double 15K had to make up a deficit after finishing behind in the opening leg. The usual pattern in the Double is that the competitor who posts the fastest time in the opening leg goes on to win this unique race in two stages. It was, therefore, unusual in San Juan Bautista that that didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen in either the men’s or women’s race.

It was a Masters stalwart, Robert Verhees, 49, of San Diego, Calif., who posted the fastest time in the opening 10K leg in San Juan Bautista, covering the distance in 33:40 (5:25 per mile pace), with Bihama Vedaste finishing two seconds behind him.

Another Masters runner, Jair Sanchez, 42, of Seaside, Calif., finished third in 34:45, with Osamu (Sam) Tada, 35, of Sacramento, Calif., finishing fourth in 34:57.

It turned out that in the concluding 5K leg, both Vedaste and Tada would leapfrog the Masters competitors who had finished ahead of them in the opening leg – and do so very convincingly.

Vedaste did it by running the 5K in 16:21 (5:16 pace), to finish 21 seconds ahead of Verhees, who ran 16:42. Thus they finished 1-2 on combined time – 50:03 and 50:22.

Likewise, Tada, a veteran of countless Doubles, ran the 5K in 16:50, compared to the 17:35 posted by Sanchez. He thus finished third on combined time, 51:47, with Sanchez finishing fourth, 52:20.

It was a similar pattern up front in the women’s race. The veteran Rosa Gutierrez, 51, of San Jose, who used to be a track star at the University of Oregon in her college days, ran the opening 10K leg in 39:16 (6:20 pace) to build an 11-second lead over Julita Baker, who finished in 39:27.

Christine Kennedy, 60, the great Masters runner from Los Gatos, Calif., who’s in the midst of a courageous comeback after a serious fall three months ago that resulted in a fractured skull, finished third in the 10K in 40:32.