Pleasanton Man Wins Ironman, Ultraman Triathlons

PLEASANTON, CA — Maksim Kniazev has truly hit the ground running since coming to the United States - literally.

Since arriving in Pleasanton, the 33-year-old Russian has won two triathlons, appropriately named Ultraman and Ironman. Despite only training for three years, he won the Ultraman Arizona Triathlon in March and the Ironman 70.3 Morro Bay in May. Before coming to the United States, he won three races in Russia.

“Triathlons help me keep myself alive,” Kniazev told Patch. “You think you are going to die. But at that moment, I look inside myself and find that I’m happy to be in this moment, and I feel alive because I’m not going to die because it’s an illusion and I can push far and far, so I’m really happy that I’m able to push my limits.”

The triathlons are certainly limit-pushing, to put it mildly: the three-day Arizona Ultraman requires 6.2 miles of swimming, 261.4 miles of cycling, and 52.4 miles of running. The Ironman competition is a one-day event consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride, and an entire marathon tacked on. Kniazev completed the former in a record 21:21:05 and the latter in just four hours, one minute.

Kniazev also made nearly record time getting to a point where he could make record time. While most triathletes start training in childhood, Kniazev started at 30. In 2017, he started casually running “just for health” and had never even heard of Ironman. But a single Google search can make all the difference in the world: while searching for Marvel’s “Ironman” movie, Kniazev came across the Ironman Hawaii Triathlon.

Mid-2020, he competed in a race in Russia, where he performed surprisingly well. “I understood then that it’s my destiny, and I should check how far I can move my skill. So I changed all my life,” he recalled. “I felt I had to stop my previous life and start my new life.”

He quit his job as a sales manager and began to train and study full-time. He obtained some sponsorships in Russia, then moved to Bulgaria to compete in more championships. In 2022, he competed in an Ironman in Kailua-Kona, where he placed 10th due to overheating.

In September 2022, he found retired Pleasanton resident Jeff Parrett through a friend. Parrett agreed to host him and help him train, and he still lives with him today.

“He was very excited about my dream to become the strongest triathlete in the world, and asked my plan after the [Kona World Championship] in Hawaii,” Kniazev said. “He offered to let me to stay in Pleasanton, because here it’s the perfect condition and all the infrastructure I need for training.”

He trains seven days a week for several hours each day, adhering to varying combinations of running, swimming, biking, and strength training. On one particular day, he might run a 10K as fast as he can, then rests three or four hours, then runs a 400-meter track loop 30 times as fast as he can. Other days, he spends up to eight hours biking, or several hours practicing swimming, the sport he feels is most difficult.

But the muscle that gets the biggest workout is his brain, he said. “It’s more difficult mentally than physically, because physically you don’t feel your legs, but mentally you should be confident in your superpower,” he said.

In the Arizona desert, and a few months later along the craggy cliffs of the Central Coast, Kniazev harnessed those mental superpowers to win both competitions, and even set an Ultraman world record.

“How you feel when you feel the sun, or see the sunset, you feel happy. Multiply that by ten times,” he said about how it felt to win.

Kniazev is now coaching, working to get sponsorships, achieve a pro-level, and training for the next Ultraman. At 33, he says it’s difficult to keep improving past 40, so he just has five to get “legendary results” and become the fastest triathlete in the world.

“It’s impossible to win every time, but when I lose to somebody it motivates me because I know that I was so close, and I know there are several moments when I feel weakness,” he said. “I know next time, I will not believe my body. Because our brains and bodies often ask us to stop, to slow down a little bit, but it’s an illusion. Humans can really do much more than they know about.”