It happened, it really happened: despite thunderstorms all night and more predicted for this afternoon, we were lucky enough to receive a clear window of flawless weather for the race itself! Tennessee is unseasonably green for March, with all the warm weather we’ve had lately, making the foliage along our mountain creeks all the more deep and lush. With flowering dogwoods and free-flowing creeks, we couldn’t have asked for a better day.
The event itself had its share of intrigue. Early race leaders Johnny Clemons and Calvin Cofield managed to inadvertently cut a short section of the course on the way to Snooper’s Rock, forcing disqualifications. This made Jacob Bradley our official winner, with a time of 1:14:42 that is slightly off from his 2nd-place finishing time in 2011. We’ll try to have more information for our Monday morning write-up.
In the meantime, here are top finishers and links to results:
10.2-mile Overall winners:
Jacob Bradley, 21, 1:14:42
Josh Holloway, 20, 1:16:34
Daniel Hamilton, 23, 1:18:56
10.2-mile Women’s winners:
Alexa Hinton, 30, 1:26:40
Jenny Smith, 26, 1:30:33
Elizabeth Callaway, 24, 1:31:28
6.5-mile Overall winners:
Nick Bacon, 29, 50:22
Sam Linhoss, 32, 52:59
Tyler Wike, 18, 53:14
6.5-mile Women’s winners:
Kathleen Turchin, 26, 1:00:31
Elizabeth Conrad, 25, 1:04:16
Elizabeth Meredith, 25, 1:06:35
River Gorge 10.2-mile OVERALL results
River Gorge 6.5-mile OVERALL results
River Gorge 10.2-mile AWARDS results
River Gorge 6.5-mile AWARDS results
Special thanks to our sponsors, especially title sponsor Salomon; not only has Salomon been hugely supportive of our series (now the Salomon Rock/Creek Trail Series), they brought demo shoes to the event for runners to try out. We’ll be featuring demo Salomon shoes on some local runs in April and May.
The North Face and Collier Construction also deserve a special mention for running the aid stations at Snooper’s Rock and Haley Road this year! Other race sponsors include Toyota, Get Out Chattanooga, Patagonia, SmartWool, Hammer Nutrition and Greenlife Grocery. In addition, several of our dedicated volunteers spent the night up at Prentice-Cooper WMA to make sure everything was just right on race day.
As always, we’ll have a more detailed write-up available on Monday. In the meantime, if you have a great story to share from the race, email [email protected] and tell us about it! We’ve already heard from a runner who says he signed up for the 6.5 as his first trail race ever, then accidentally lined up with the 10-milers and ran the whole thing despite never running 10 miles before… Jeff, shoot us an email!
You can also “like” the Rock/Creek River Gorge Trail Race on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RiverGorge to see race reports, photo albums and more from the race as soon as those become available.
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