Isaac Updike
In his quest to kickstart his 2023 track season by racing frequently to make up for time lost to two bouts of COVID last summer, Ketchikan pro runner Isaac Updike has traveled coast to coast and touched down in places in between.
Updike’s Tour of America continued apace Saturday, when the 30-year-old rocked a fifth-place finish at the USA Track and Field National Club XC Championships in San Francisco.
On a morning when heavy rain and winds, and a fallen tree that nearly struck a pop-up tent, prompted park officials to shut down the course in Golden Gate Park for safety reasons, the scheduled 10-kilometer race (6.2 miles) was moved to an uneven oval surrounding a nearby polo field. The field of 440 finishers ran seven-plus laps of an oval that measured about 1,200 meters.
Updike clocked 26 minutes, 42.0 seconds on a surface of concrete and dirt that he said the GPS on his watch measured at 5.92 miles, or about a quarter-mile short of 10K. Runners raced clockwise instead of the customary counter-clockwise that is run on an actual track.
“It was a whole ordeal,” Updike said with a laugh. “We were pretty fortunate to be able to race. It turned into a track meet.”
American Olympian Cole Hocker won in 26:28, Tom Anderson took second in 26:32, Zach Planning was third in 26:34 and Joey Barriatua, who like Updike is best known as a steeplechaser, edged Updike 26:41.8 to 26:42.0
The race was Updike’s fifth in the last 10 weeks. That’s an unusually active fall-winter schedule for him. He usually would be almost exclusively training, and eschewing races, this time to year to prepare for the 2023 track season. But COVID wrecked much of Updike’s 2022 track season, so the 6-foot-2, Nike-sponsored athlete adjusted his schedule to make offseason racing part of his intensive training bridging into 2023. Updike said he has put in weeks of training of 90-plus miles and tapered slightly for Saturday’s race.
He was psyched about his place and his time.
“That’s really promising,” Updike said. “I thoroughly surprised myself. It sets me up well for indoors.”
Updike ran much of the race with the lead pack. Given the multi-lap nature of the revised course, he said it was a trip to have to weave through lapped runners while trying to press the pace.
“It got really congested real quick – we were lapping people on the fourth lap,’’ he said. “It felt like an airport, where you’re trying to make your gate.”
Updike’s fall and winter racing has taken him to Minneapolis, New York City, Memphis, Tenn., Austin, Texas, and San Francisco. Updike’s home base these days is Flagstaff, Ariz., but he’s more like a resident of America. Besides frequently traveling to races, he spent time in New York this fall training with his Empire Elite Track Club. After Saturday’s race, he said, he’s headed to Seattle for a week, then will spend time in La Grande, Oregon, where he attended Eastern Oregon University, and then San Francisco again before returning to Flagstaff.
Updike said he plans to next race, likely a 3K, at the University of Washington Invitational indoor meet in late January and follow that with a 5K at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston in February.