Lizzie RoyerOn a glorious morning in the Chickamauga Battlefield military park Saturday, Paul Stuart and Lizzie Royer won the first 15-kilometer race they ever entered and Jenn and Lucas Stocks completed different streaks in winning other Chickamauga Chase events.
Jenn Stocks followed her 15k and 5k female victories of the previous two years with the 2016 women’s triumph in the 8-mile trail race, and her husband followed his third- and second-place 5k showings of 2014 and 2015 with the next-step rise to first out of 402 finishers.
Simon Gloger was the overall winner in the 130-finisher trail race, and WRCB-TV news reporter Kelly McCarthy was the women’s 5k victor after winning the same distance in the inaugural Erlanger Chattanooga Marathon last month.
Stuart, a 22-year-old University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate student from Brentwood with one season of cross country eligibility remaining for the Mocs, won the main race Saturday in 49 minutes, 46 seconds. Royer, 23 and a 2015 Towson University graduate from York, Pa., who has been in Dalton the past 11 weeks training to be a Shaw Industries territory manager, was 10th overall (out of 281) in 1:02:29.
“I’ll be going to Baltimore. I’ll be leaving in a week,” Royer said. “This was my first race down here, but I wanted to run one before going back home. I had heard good things about the Chickamauga Chase, and they were true. I love the course.”
She ran cross country in high school and continued to run competitively in college, though not for the school.
Stuart ran by himself most of the race, as did runner-up Chad Dean from Cleveland, who finished in 53:13 in his return to Chattanooga-area competition after about six years, and both acknowledged the difficulty of running one’s fastest if not in a group.
“It’s hard to pace yourself when you’re by yourself. You think about random stuff and then realize you’re slowing down,” said Stuart, who also won the Erlanger Chattanooga half marathon. “But I felt good and it was a great day and I just wanted to have fun, and I had some teammates here supporting me, so it was great.”
His only time goal was beating 50 minutes for the 9.3 miles, and he did that.
“I had never run this race before, but we run out here all the time. It’s one of the best places to run in Chattanooga,” he said. “The tough part of the course is seven to eight miles, where you have the ‘Three Sisters.’ There are those three hills in a row, but there really are four or five in that mile.”
He’s going to take a break from running, he said, before starting to prepare for his final season as a Moc.
Dean is coming back from a long break. A 35-year-old residential general contractor who got busy “building houses and being married,” he cycled with his wife “a lot the last couple of years” and started getting back into running during the winter. He ran some Knoxville-area races, including the Covenant Health half marathon two weeks ago, before returning to home turf.
The 2008 Chickamauga Chase 5k winner said he’s training to run his first marathon this fall.
“I may come back to the battlefield,” Dean said, referring to the annual 26.2-mile race in November.
Kevin Huwe was third in 56:35, and masters winner Hugh Enicks, 56, and Josh Erhard also finished the 15k in under an hour.
Jenn Stocks will graduate in three weeks from UTC’s physical therapy program, and the Berry College graduate admitted she ran the trail race Saturday to complete a set of three bayonets given to Chickamauga Chase winners.
“I’m not a trail runner. It was tough,” she said after her 55:58 finish, third overall behind Gloger (52:44) and Nathan Helton (52:48). “You don’t notice the hills, but they’re there. They’re long and gradual.”
Her husband had been sick with a stomach virus for two days and almost didn’t run Saturday, but he finally got his first in the Chase 5k despite his slowest time (18:05) in the three years he’s been running the race.
“I didn’t really care about my time today. It was more about getting that ‘W,'” Lucas said.
McCarthy, 26, came to Chattanooga from upstate New York about a year and a half ago and was the second female finisher in the 2015 Chickamauga Chase 15k. She was a middle-distance track runner at Syracuse.
“I’m coming off a knee injury, so I was just happy to finish,” she said Saturday after coming in 11th overall in 21:11, nine seconds behind boyfriend Dan Kennedy.
Jack McFarland, 81, of Decatur, Ga., has run all 48 Chickamauga Chases. He finished the 5k in 52:15.
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.