Michael Kirk and Kimberly Humphries were comeback conquerors Saturday morning in the Chickamauga Chase 15-kilometer road race. Both overall winners displayed good progress in recovering from injuries.
Triathlete Humphries was the top female finisher for the second time in three years — the time she’s lived in Chattanooga — but couldn’t run the event last year after a bicycle injury. Her time Saturday was 1 hour, 5 minutes, 30 seconds — good for 27th place overall out of 446 finishers just a week after she finished second in a half marathon in Evansville, Ind.
The second woman was Terri Kirkman of Canton, Ga., in 1:08:41.
The 40-year-old Kirk won in 53:32 in his first Chase, although he did run the half marathon in the national battlefield park in November 2008, soon after his family moved from Salt Lake City to Signal Mountain. The runner-up in 55:27 was another race first-timer, Chattanoogan Kevin Boucher, 31, who finished fifth overall in the Scenic Half Marathon in late February.
“I’ve done some riding out here lately. This is a great park,” Boucher said. “I’ve done a lot of trail races, and this was a road race with the scenery of a trail race.”
The accompanying 5k had 423 finishers. Also with a scenic walk and a Kiddie K, the total registration of 1,296 exceeded by more than 500 last year’s previous record for the 42-year-old event.
Kirk said he didn’t really know who was running which race until the 15k and 5k runners split, but he never trailed after that.
“This is only the second race I’ve run in Chattanooga on roads. I’ve done a couple of trail races,” said Kirk, who grew up in Richmond, Va.
After working his way back from an Achilles’ tendon injury, he wanted to get a comfortable lead before the second half of the race, which has some rolling terrain.
“I just wanted to make it hard to catch me when I got there,” he said.
Daniel Pick was third in 55:48, and Zach Barnett, Gilbert Fraire, Cliff Milam and Jeff Mlynski also finished in less than an hour. Milam was the masters winner in 59:37, and Randall Godwin was the grand masters’ best in 1:06.28. Doris Windsand-Dausman and Karen Galyon were the women’s 40- and 50-over fastest.
Jonathan Preg of Atlanta won the 5k in 17:19, and Erin Rayburn of Lookout Mountain was the top female in 21:59. Don Gregg and Wendy Houston were the 5k masters winners, and Bill Ensign and Paula Cooper took the grand masters titles.
Longtime race director George Skonberg honored Ed Harris and his family for 30 years of service in stocking and cleaning up the water stops for the Chase.
Tim Ensign, who had been the 15k overall or masters winner the past five years, arrived too late to run after being involved in the first auto accident of his life. Uninjured, Ensign spun out on leaked diesel fuel on the Rossville Boulevard exit ramp from Interstate 24 and took a hit from another skidding car.