SAN DIEGO MARATHON : Chuela Bags the Race as Pfeffer Forgets the Bag

Just before sunrise Sunday, Kirk Pfeffer put his gym bag on the macadam, opened his car door, piled in a son and four daughters, got in and drove away from his Del Mar hotel.

The gym bag stayed in the parking lot. He was concentrating.

A few minutes later, Pfeffer got out of the car at a Carlsbad shopping center, ready to defend his San Diego Marathon title. He looked around for his gym bag. Oh-oh. There went his concentration.

It might not have mattered. Marathon officials rounded up some size-nine shoes and a shirt, forgave his not wearing the No. 1 bib still in his bag and watched him lead the race for more than 15 miles. From there out, it was Jose Chuela’s day.

Actually, all day was Chuela’s day. He won the 29th running of the event in a pedestrian 2 hours 19 minutes 54 seconds, fast enough to claim the $1,000 first prize and $250 bonus for beating 2:20. Pfeffer, from Boulder, Colo., was second, 6:02 behind.

Kim Campo won the women’s event, earning $1,000 for finishing first and $200 for being from San Diego. Her time was 2:55:22, with defending champion Cheryl Brady second, 5:59 behind.

“There’s no blaming the equipment,” said Pfeffer of his race, which was 5:01 slower than a year ago. “I don’t have blisters from the shoes. That was no problem. He was just tough, and maybe my head wasn’t in it.”

The race was a reversal of last year’s San Diego Marathon, in which the two ran together until Pfeffer broke away at about the same spot, winning by 6:26.

Chuela said he was toying with Pfeffer in the early stages Sunday, running in his wake as Pfeffer broke the offshore breeze down Carlsbad Boulevard along the Pacific at a 5:08-per-mile pace. “I could see he was having trouble,” Chuela said through an interpreter.

Chuela moved up on Pfeffer’s right elbow, then circled back around to his left side. At 15 3/4 miles, he passed Pfeffer and quickly moved 15 seconds ahead, not speeding up all that much, but taking advantage of Pfeffer’s slowing.

The two were almost a half-mile ahead of third-place James Sheremeta. In the next mile, Chuela went ahead by more than 30 seconds, then by more than a minute and the race was over.

Without competition, Chuela cruised home in a time that he said allowed him to save enough energy to compete in Sunday’s Super Bowl 10K run at Redondo Beach.

It was far from a personal best. Chuela, from Uruapan, Mexico, is 34 and ran his first marathon in New York in 1984--”I died like a dog,” he said, laughing--and ran a 2:12:08 in Monterey, Mexico, in 1988. He trains at altitudes ranging from 7,000-11,000 feet and frequently stays in Compton with relatives when he is running in Southern California. “Last year, I came into this race without a lot of distance (in training) and wasn’t prepared to compete,” he said. “This year, I was prepared.”

Campo also was prepared. A 39-year-old housewife, mother and real estate agent, she had not won a marathon in five years and had a goal of 2:50 to qualify for the Olympic trials. She wrote the split times she needed on both her arms, from wrist to elbow.

“By 10 miles, I was right on my split, but by 16 miles I was more than a minute behind it,” she said. By then, she also was coasting, more than a minute ahead of Brady, a triathlete from Honolulu.

“I just decided to run my race and not worry about anything else,” Brady said.

There was no reason to worry, and Brady had no problems in racing for second place, finishing 1:09 ahead of Janet Christiansen.

Campo and Brady hung around at race’s end, exchanging pleasantries, and Chuela talked about making the Mexican Olympic team, which will require his finding more than 10 minutes of speed for the 26-mile, 385-yard run.

Pfeffer was agitated about the whole day and left quickly, still looking for his gym bag. “It had our airplane tickets and about $200 in it,” he said. “I don’t like leaving those things in a hotel room.”

Instead, he left them in a parking lot, along, perhaps, with his race.