Anchorage’s Jason Lamoreaux does double duty, and winds up a double winner

Jason Lamoreaux planned to spend Saturday afternoon sitting in a hot tub, and who could blame him?

He spent the morning doing a triathlon in Wasilla, followed by a bicycle hill climb up Hatcher Pass.

He won both of them.

Lamoreaux, 40, is one of those crazy Alaska athletes who, given the choice, chooses extreme over moderation. Saturday his options were the Why Not Tri triathlon (400-yard swim, 9.5-mile bike, 3.1-mile run) and the Hatcher Pass Hill Climb (9.8 miles with 2,500 feet of climbing).

His decision: Why not try both?

“I’ve done back-to-back races like this before and mostly it’s just because when there’s two fun races that are close together, I’ll look to see if I can possibly do both,” Lamoreaux said. “This was really convenient because they’re both in the Valley, and that made it possible.”

Lamoreaux, a project manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation who lives in Anchorage, began the day with a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call, followed by a peanut butter-and-honey sandwich.

The triathlon started at 8:30 a.m. at Wasilla High School. Racers started in intervals and Lamoreaux was among the first to start.

He finished in less than an hour, which gave him plenty of time to load up his bike and make the 20-minute drive to the Hatcher Pass start line, where racers left in a mass start at 11 a.m.

“I snacked a little bit between races but mostly I wanted to keep hydrated,” he said.

Lamoreaux swapped his time-trial bike for his road bike and started pedaling uphill for his second race of the day.

“There was definitely some fatigue in my legs,” he said. “When I tried to push hard, I could definitely feel it.”

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Erik Swanson leads Robert Moreland around a turn near the Gold Mint trailhead during the Hatcher Pass Hill Climb Saturday, June 15, 2019. (Loren Holmes / ADN)

Lamoreaux is coming off meniscus surgery on his right knee — nothing structural, he said, just some cleaning up — but the knee is still recovering from the trauma of the procedure. Because of that, he held back a bit during the triathlon’s 5K run, “and that definitely helped me out for the second race because I wasn’t maxed out,” he said.

By noon, Lamoreaux was a two-time winner. He topped a field of nearly 400 triathletes in 50 minutes, 59 seconds, and he topped a field of 18 hill-climbers in 34:59. He beat Todd Jackson by 78 seconds to win the triathlon and he edged Eric Flanders by two seconds to win the hill climb.

And then his day was done, at least the hard part.

“I’m going to drive home and sit in the hot tub,” Lamoreaux said.

Hatcher Pass Hill Climb

Men — 1) Jason Lamoreaux 34:59, 2) Eric Flanders 35:01, 3) Justin Neff 37:50, 4) Erik Osberg 40:05, 5) Jacques Annandale 40:55, 6) Erik Swanson 42:43, 7) Robert Moreland 43:52, 8) Dean Potter 44:38, 9) Joe Loffredo 44:39, 10) Jacque Drumm 48:51, 11) Chris Dock 48:58, 12) Tol Fishburn 55:14, 13) Lee Weikert 56:01, 14) Brad Quam 1:06:52.

Women — 1) Tamra Kornfield 48:29, 2) Stacey Kolstad 50:08, 3) Robin Cope 1:07:04, 4) Niki Ratana 1:17:02.

Update: An early version of this story misidentified the kind of bike Lamoreaux used in the hill climb.