Not every runner, elite or otherwise, chose to stay in Flagstaff over the holiday weekend and either race in the July 4 Downtown Mile or just stick to training.
This long weekend saw elite marathoner Sara Hall, who splits time between Flagstaff and Crested Butte, Colo., fly to Australia for the Gold Coast Half Marathon. Two adventuresome Flagstaff trail runners, the indefatigable Peter Mortimer and Kevin Rosenkranz travel to tiny Seward, AK, to do the Mount Marathon 5K. And one of the top McKirdy Trained runners, Yemane Haileselassie, traveled to Atlanta for the Peachtree 10K road race.
Hall, 41 and presumably in early training for a fall marathon, finished third in the Gold Coast Half, run by her sponsor, Asics. Her time was 1:10:54, behind Leanne Pompeani, 28, at 1:09:20 and Jessica Stenson, 36, at 1:10:08, a personal best. In 2023, Pompeani, an Aussie, finished second to American Keira D’Amato in 1:09:07.
Through the first 10K, Hall was only three seconds behind Pompeani (32:26), but the Aussie stretched the lead over Hall to 25 seconds at the 15K mark.
At Peachtree, Haileslassie, an Eritrean living and training in Flagstaff, finished eighth in 28:03, nearly a minute behind Kenyan Sabastian Sawe at 28:03.
And in Alaska, at what is dubbed the toughest 5K in America — it’s straight up in highly technical terrain, Rosenkranz of Flagstaff finished 80th in 59:59. Mortimer was 112th in 1:03:32. Rosenkranz most recently finished third in Aravaipa’s Mesquite Canyon half marathon.
Mortimer, who always offers vivid and entertaining race results on social media, posted this after the race:
Leave a Reply