The winner was Will Christian from Annapolis.
More than 7,000 runners took part in Sunday's Half Marathon in Frederick. With a siren sounding and race announcer Ken Berger getting the crowd and the participants excited, the runners started their 13-mile course on East Patrick Street in front of the Frederick Fairgrounds at 7:00 AM.
The winner was Will Christian, 28, from Annapolis. "I feel really good about it," he said after he came in at one-hour and eight-minutes. "Frederick's very hilly, but I feel really good about the race."
While the hills presented a challenge, Christian says there were plenty of people along the way to cheer him on.
He says he does a lot of training to take part in these types of events, running 90-miles a week.
Christian currently serves in the US Navy.
The top female finisher was Elaina Orlova, 42, whose originally from Russia, but lives in Gaithersburg. Her time was one-hour, 18-minutes, 45-seconds. She says it was a "good race, good organization, {and} many people. It's nice."
The course begins at the Fairgrounds, travels down East Street and Monocacy Boulevard. It then heads into the Downtown on North Market Street, and from 6th Street on to Bentz Street, passing through Baker Park, and near Hood College and Frederick Memorial Hospital. It also took runners through Monocacy Village before ending up at the finish line at the Fairgrounds.
Prior to the start of the race, Rachel Ridgeway, the race director, recalled to the runners when this event first began in 2002. "We had winter storm weather advisories. It was sleeting, snowing and we ran in a blizzard. And there were about 500 of use," she said. "Today, ten years later, we're going to have awesome weather, hopefully no sleet, and there are 7500 of us."
Lee Corrigan, of Corrigan Sports Enterprises, which puts on the event, says this is probably the best Running Festival so far. "This is biggest crowd ever. It's about 7400 total registered this year," he says. "With the way everything is going so far this year, this seems like our best yet in terms of operations." He says if runners get the word out about this Half Marathon, more may enter next year.
The Half-Marathon was part of the two-day Frederick Running Festival, which included a Kids Fun Run and Twilight 5K on Saturday.
