University of Tennessee at Chattanooga cross country runner John Payne made his first Chattanooga Chase a winning one Monday morning from Riverview Park, and Jessica Marlier had a successful return to a race she likes but a course she doesn't.
The Chattanooga Chase 8-kilometer race is the Road Runners Club of America state championship 8k for 2017, and Payne won it in 26 minutes, 53 seconds. The 20-year-old chemical engineering major from Portland, Tenn., is enrolled in the current summer-school session and hustled back to do homework, so he didn't try to duplicate Seth Ruhling's double victory in the 2016 8k and 1-mile race.
Bryson Harper, who won the 8k in 2008 and 2009 in 27:07 and 26:08, was third Monday in 27:20 in the 50th running of the Chattanooga Chase and then won the 1-miler in 4:45.
Nathan Holland was second in the 8k in 27:12, and 16-year-old Adan Rodriguez was fourth in 28:25. Kevin Huwe, masters winner Geno Phillips, Ryan Schumacher and Chad Dean also finished in less than 29 minutes. Ruhling was ninth in 29:23, and grand masters winner Dean Thompson was 10th in 29:31.
Marlier, 31, was the first female finisher and 19th overall in 31:24, and Rachel Mason - who won the Chickamauga Chase last month and the Market Street Mile on May 6 - was the women's runner-up in 33:14.
Jennifer Huwe was the second-place woman in the 1-mile in 5:58, and 45-year-old Dianna Leun was the female masters victor in both races in 34:50 and 6:19. Tripp McCallie was the 1-mile men's masters winner in 5:13.
The Memorial Day event had 812 total entrants for the two races, with some overlap, and 583 finished the 8k. It was run under a sunny sky that turned overcast before the 1-miler.
Sunny was a little bit of a challenge for the winner, but Shady even more so - Shady Circle off Hixson Pike, that is.
"It was a little warmer than I expected," said Payne, who admitted he was prepared for rain. "I think I ran the race I wanted to, but I could have scouted better. I didn't know Shady was as long as it was."
That part of the 4.97-mile course provided tiring climbs preceding the Chase's infamous Minnekahda ascent, which Payne had made on training runs.
"That hill hurts," he said. "Both of them especially - all two miles."
Marlier, who won the Chattanooga Chase in 2014 and was second to Olympian Lanni Marchant the year before, knows the feeling.
"The course is not one of my favorites," she said, "but I love the history and tradition of this race."
She also loves Chattanooga. She came to the area in 2005 to attend Southern Adventist University in Collegedale and has moved away twice but keeps coming back. She now lives in Ooltewah and works for Fleet Feet.
"It's such a great place to be. The community here is so amazing," she said.
Harper, who had success both as a runner and coach for Bryan College but now works for Unum in Chattanoogan, didn't get to run for a while because of a torn ACL in his right knee and a cracked right tibia - not from his "dangerous" pursuits such as hang gliding and motorcycle riding but from playing soccer - but he started running again last August and won the Karen Lawrence Run on New Year's Eve.
And at 28 he's not far off his Chattanooga Chase pace of eight years ago. His 1-mile win Monday came in his first time to run both Chase races.
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.