Looking back is a sign of weakness for a runner, so Simon Ricci never did.
Ricci waited until the bend across the Lefty O’doul Bridge over McCovey Cove to get a glimpse of whatever might be behind him; the right turn gave him a natural view. There was about a mile to go, and no one with a running bib was in sight.
Not only was that the moment Ricci knew he’d cruise to the 2022 San Francisco Marathon victory, it was also when he passed his office at 24 Willie Mays Plaza.
“The last mile was really fun because I knew I was going to win,” Ricci told KNBR. “I was like, ‘wow, this is so crazy!’ It’s like 8:00 in the morning, everything’s so pretty, the sun is just starting to peek through some of the fog. And I was just telling myself, you better enjoy this because who knows the next time you’re going to win a marathon? This could be a once in a lifetime experience.”
Ricci, 24, won the San Francisco Marathon with a time of 2:31:42 — seven minutes faster than the second-place finisher. The next day, he worked from home as a baseball operations analyst for the Giants.
The July 23 race was his first ever marathon, but Ricci isn’t a rookie. He started running cross country in middle school and continued at Division III Cal Tech. Long-distance running found him when he played youth soccer and realized his favorite thing about practice was the warm-up laps.
Ricci has always been bright. At 14, he made it to the semifinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In high school, he worked for the Swanson Lab at the Northwestern Brain Lab Institute and helped scientists there create a mathematical model to identify brain tumors. While running at Cal Tech, he majored in physics. Ricci’s friend, Josh Rosenkranz, said he fills out the New York Times crossword puzzle every day.
“I think what makes him special — A, he’s a very fast runner but also he’s so talented in so many different areas,” Rosenkranz said.
Baseball’s blend of athleticism and analytics is a natural fit for the self-proclaimed math nerd and sports fan. Growing up in Chicago while his Cubs broke their 108-year World Series drought deepened Ricci’s love of the game. Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” showed him that real people actually can work with numbers in baseball.
Internships with the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs built up Ricci’s resume before he joined the Giants’ front office toward the end of the 2020 season. He’s one of four staffers listed as analysts in the baseball operations department, where he sifts through data to find trends that could be used in player development or roster management.
“It’s really satisfying to see if you can come up with an insight and see the guys apply it on the field — and then hopefully improve,” Ricci said. “That’s really rewarding for me.”
Away from his laptop, Ricci continued to run. He entered the San Francisco race so he could get a qualifying time for next year’s Boston and Chicago marathons. He had no idea he could actually win it.
In training — during which he consulted with Rosenkranz — Ricci worked up to 20 miles. In all his cross country experience, he’d never routinely ran that far. He wasn’t sure how the city’s hills would affect his pace. He had to get used to the feeling of running for that long of a time and fueling with Gu gels while on the move.
Ricci’s plan was to take the early climbs, around the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Mason area, with a slow pace. Slow is a relative term: his first mile split over seven minutes came at the Garmin Hill Challenge 11 miles into the race in Marin. He wanted to keep his effort constant throughout the race and make up time on the downhills.
“I thought top 10 was a possibility, and that’s how I was trying to pace myself,” Ricci said. “But I was feeling good at halfway, and said ‘Okay, let’s see who I could catch.’ People just started coming back to me. I’m not going to complain about that or slow down for them.”
He stuck to the plan. After his 7:20 hill time, Ricci ran at a 6:04, 5:54, 5:57 and 5:49 mile pace to chase down the pack and pull away.
By the time he made it to the home stretch by Oracle Park, Ricci left 2,908 male runners in the dust. Crossing the finish line first is the product of both Ricci’s skill and the competition field. It can come down to a handful of Olympic-level runners deciding whether or not to enter; last year’s winning time was over 10 minutes faster than Ricci’s.
Still, a gold medal is a gold medal.
“It’s one of those things where it hurts during and it hurts after, and you don’t remember any of that,” Ricci said. “Which I think is part of running in general. There’s so many times in a race where I’m like, why am I doing this? Then after the race, it’s like oh that was really fun. And then I want to do it again.”
As for his work with the Giants, Ricci doesn’t have a specific MLB dream job in mind. A piece of advice he’s taken to heart is to keep all doors open.
He’s well on his way to running through one.