Hafer and Ramirez win Summer Roundup; new course and age group records set
Ryan Hafer, 26, of Colorado Springs put nearly a minute between himself and his nearest competitor to win the 2012 Summer Roundup Trail Run on Sunday morning, crossing the finish line of the 12K race in 41 minutes, 46 seconds.
Kelly Ramirez, 26, of Fort Collins, won the women's division in 53:09.
Hafer's win set a new overall course record. The previous record (44:53) was set by Peter Maksimow, 32, of Manitou Springs. The previous record for male runners 25-29 (44:34) was set by Alex Nichols, 25, of Colorado Springs.
See Men's Results - multiple new course records
See Women's Results - multiple new course records
Finally, an event held on schedule and without a hitch.
After two weeks of postponements and cancellations wrapped around the turmoil and tragedy of the Waldo Canyon fire, Sunday’s 13th annual Summer Roundup Trail 12K at Bear Creek Park welcomed 679 runners and a sense of normalcy.
“We took out a lot of frustration today,” said Barbara Good, 56, a Rockrimmon neighborhood evacuee. “You try to get away from the smoke to train, but once you’re evacuated, you have no desire to do anything. You just hunker down and pray. That’s about it. It was just perfect out here today, except it was hard to find a good parking spot. This event has really grown.”
That growth has attracted the area’s top runners, and that competition helped Coronado graduate Ryan Hafer shatter the event record. His time of 41 minutes, 46 seconds was an amazing 3:08 better than the previous mark set last year by Peter Maksimow.
Actually, the first four runners to reach the finish line had times good enough to win the previous 12 Summer Roundups.
“Peter is a good runner, and that looked like a pretty good time from last year,” said Hafer, 26, the Pikes Peak Road Runners Winter Series champ who also won the Pikes Peak Ascent in 2005. “We were all pushing each other, and that’s what made it faster. But I didn’t think I would be that much under the course record.”
Kenyan native Geofrey Terer crossed the finish line 49 seconds after Hafer, followed 2 seconds later by Sage Canaday, who recently moved to Boulder from Oregon.
“We were sharing the lead on the way up, but Ryan was way stronger today,” said Canaday, 26, a Cornell graduate and overall winner of last month’s Mount Washington Road Race in Gorham, N.H.
“I was hoping to be more competitive and give him a run for his money, but I was happy to put in a hard effort," Canaday said. "I’m training for the (Pikes Peak) Ascent, and I haven’t raced this high for a month.”
Kelly Ramirez of Fort Collins won the women’s division in 53:08, followed by Albuquerque, N.M., runner Rachael Cuellar (54:40) and Rochelle Persson of Colorado Springs (55:02).
Hafer, a graduate of Harvard – making two Ivy Leaguers in the top three – missed last year’s entire summer season while recovering from a broken sesamoid bone under his big toe. The engineer for a defense company plans on entering graduate school in mechanical engineering at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
Before that, he hopes for further conquests on the trails.
“I’m definitely training for the Ascent, and it’s only six weeks away. I definitely need to get up to altitude, but I think I’m in a good spot. I’m getting on Pikes Peak as much as I can.”
That was Good’s vantage point, back on June 23, when something caught her eye.
“We were hiking that day on the peak, and saw the smoke from a different view,” said Good, a Widefield graduate. “We didn’t’ realize it was heading towards us. It’s good to be able to go back up there again. That was tough to see.”
