Nick Arciniaga Enjoying New Sponsor Under Armour; Says Yuki Kawauchi Is One Of His Heroes, Talks About Racing In A Spider-Man Singlet

by Steve Sorpano
May 21, 2014

I caught up with Nick Arciniaga after his 16th place finish at Sunday’s 2014 Bay To Breakers in San Francisco in around 38:02 (the online results incorrectly have him 17th place and with a slightly slower time than he should).

Nick Arciniaga’s Bay To Breakers Race Kit

Arciniaga wasn’t thrilled with the performance. He was hoping for better with both place and time, but recognized that there was a strong headwind that made times slower. He said his legs just weren’t ready for the faster turnover 12K distance as it’s only been 4-weeks since the Boston Marathon and he’s not been training for shorter races.

Like Sara Hall, Arciniaga has been racing a good amount and plans on doing more. He won the US Marathon Champs in October, was 2nd American in Boston (7th overall, 2:11:47) and plans on doing Grandmas Marathon in June where he hopes to “go for a win”. He’s done a lot of other races in between as well including the US 12K Champs, 15K Champs, Club XC and US XC Champs. Talking about competing often despite being a marathon guy he said:

“I just want to get myself out there competing more. I want to see how my body holds up with the consistent marathons back to back. There’s not too much a gap between [Grandmas] and Boston and I’m just hoping to be able to recover enough and run well. One of my heroes right now is Yuki Kawauchi who runs 12 marathons a year … I want to see if I’m capable of doing something like that, just competing and running at a high level consistently. I love to run … just have fun with these races and enjoy the sport a little more instead of it having to be more of a job.”

Arciniaga recently got sponsored by Under Armour and they had a pretty cool Spider-Man singlet for him to wear today which you could have won if you were the closest to guessing his finishing time. I asked him how things with Under Armour have been so far and he said he loves the shoes (they’re “2:11 shoes” now as he wore them in Boston). He also has enjoyed working with the company directly as they flew him out to their headquarters in Baltimore to get his input on developing shoes/gear for the future and Arciniaga said he really appreciate that as he’s never been involved with a company where they really valued his opinion.

More: Full Race Results
*LRC 2014 Bay To Breakers 12K: Kenya’s Geoffrey Kenisi And Iowa’s Diane Nukuri-Johnson (Burundi) Get The Wins As Sara Hall (2nd) And Ben Bruce (7th) Are Top Americans
*LRC Sara Hall Talks About The Difficult Bay To Breakers Course, Her Busy 2014 Racing Season and A Fall Marathon Debut
*San Francisco Examiner: Diane Johnson wins second Bay to Breakers race in a row Johnson says that after training for marathons this race “feels like a sprint”.
*SFGate: Bay to Breakers hits its stride after slow start Includes a run down of some of the police crackdowns on drinking and arrest reports.
*SFGate: Bay to Breakers tamer this year, Panhandle residents say
*Nukuri-Johnson’s win at Bay To Breakers was just one of many great performances across the US for Iowa based runners Shelby Houlihan, Katy Moen, Edward Kemboi, Rob McCann all thrived as well.
*MB: Bay to Breakers results
*MB: Ryan Hall has pulled out of tmw’s Bay To Breakers