Sacramento Running News

The Napa Valley Marathon was this morning and if you were hoping for a top-spot, you had better have brought your long-game. A quick survey of the results shows a surprising number of the region’s top ultrarunners among the top finishers.

The winning woman was San Francisco’s Devon Crosby-Helms, whose 2:39:37 appears to be a new course record. According to my March issue of Ultrarunning, Crosby-Helms is also the woman who ran the fastest 100Km in the North America last year. (7:46:33 at the Mad City 100Km)

I don’t recognize any of the other top women, but the men’s field was stacked with some of the top ultra guys.

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As with last month’s PAUSATF Grand Prix half-marathon in Humboldt, locals dominated at Clarskburg in both individual and team results.

This year, the traditional 30Km PAUSATF race was dispensed with, but there were still a boatload of overlapping races associated with this event. There was a 20-miler, a half marathon, a 5 Km, and a kids half-mile. With the half-marathon being the PA (i.e., faster) event and starting just 20 minutes after the 20 miler, half-marathon runners enjoyed the special thrill of weaving through the endless, and often clueless, ranks of slower 20-mile runners.

I was pleased to see locals–Kevin Pool of Folsom and Lindsay Nelson of Roseville–get the win in this PA race–both with solid times. Pool’s 1:07:56 would, in a typical local race, give him a commanding lead. Here, however, runner up Sergio Reyes was only seconds back in just over 1:08. In fact, there were eight men under 1:10!

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