Spending the weekend in Ooltewah with his in-laws, Rudy and Carolyn Chastain, Jason Altman of Knoxville made it an extra memorable trip by winning the Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon on Saturday.
Altman, 31, was trying to finish in less than 2 hours and 40 minutes and did it by 16 seconds in holding off Dan Fassinger of Lawrenceville, Ga. Fassinger completed the 26.2-mile course at Barnhardt Circle in Fort Oglethorpe in 2:40:10, and Altman’s training partner, Matthew Lawhern of Seymour, Tenn., was third in 2:44:02.
Kaye Starosciak, 37, was the women’s winner and 10th overall in 3:03:44.
The race still includes two loops through the park, and Altman ran it in 2005, when it started and finished at Oakwood Baptist Church in Chickamauga. He was eighth in 3:03 in what was his second marathon, and Saturday’s return was his eighth overall.
“My son is 16 months old now, and I wanted to run a marathon he could see me win,” Altman said. “I knew 2:40 would have won the last several years, and I hoped it would again. But then I had to hit it.”
His 2:39:44 was a personal best by five minutes, beating his 2:44:50 in Portland, Ore., in 2007.
“I came down last weekend and did one loop through the course and the new start/finish area to refamiliarize myself,” he said.
He said he and Lawhern ran together for four or five miles, “and then this guy I didn’t know [Fassinger] came out of nowhere and we ran together till about mile 22. We had a brief conversation early and alternated as to who was setting the pace. In the 23rd mile I could tell he was a little fatigued, so I pushed it pretty hard, hoping to drop him.
“I did just enough, I guess, because he didn’t really fade and I was feeling it by the end.”
Hugh Enicks, who won the marathon three out of four years and was second in the exception before missing the race last year, won the accompanying half marathon Saturday in 1:19.45. William Warner, 57, was second to the 51-year-old Enicks in 1:22:17, and Laura Peterson was 16th overall and the female winner in 1:35:43.
Enicks finished third in his age group in the national marathon championships last month in Minneapolis and will be running in a national cross country meet next month.
Peterson moved to Lookout Mountain from Michigan in February to work in the athletic department at Covenant College. A basketball and volleyball player at Finlandia University, she began running two years ago.
Murphy McMahon, an 11-year-old Baylor sixth-grader, won the final one-mile leg of the Chattanooga Track Club’s 2010 junior marathon.