Desert Runner Trail Series Final Standings!

I mentioned it in our thank you email to the runners who came out to our Mesquite Canyon Trail runs this past weekend but it’s hard to believe we’ve already closed the books on another season of the Desert Runner Trail Series. A lot can happen over the course of the series beginning in October and this series always seems to find a way to bring these changes to the forefront. We had a couple runners finish in first place following their Mesquite effort despite entering the race off of the podium. We also had runners fall victim in the other direction finding themselves out of podium contention despite strong finishes at Mesquite.

Here are a few fun facts as the results shake out (I’m a baseball fan and enjoy stats so feel free to skip over these and head straight to the results):

Quail Series

270 different women completed a race. 197 Men completed at least one race.
4 women did all 7 races in the series; 2 men ran all seven races.
The Quail Series saw the entire women’s Open Division podium finish with “Master’s” age speedy ladies as Tina Samartinean took the crown for first female.
In fact, the first 5 women were 40+ years of age in the Quail Series.
There were 7 different winners for both the men and women in the Quail Series
We had competitors ranging from 10 years old to 78 years old in the Quail Series!
David Brewer took home first place in the Quail Open Division and timed all of our events after finishing his race.
Braeden Leftwich took home the inaugural Junior’s Division overall champion at the ripe old age of 10. He also made darn sure you got your finisher glass when he was on the job!
On the back end of the Open Division podium is Braeden’s dad and your favorite beerista at our beer garden each race as Chris Worden rounds out the podium with a third place finish!

Roadrunner Series

296 different women completed a race. 289 men completed at least one race.
3 men did all 7 races in the series while 2 women did them all.
Larry Kline, who leads our fantastic Tuesday night track workouts, won the Open Division over Yuval Zarai by a mere 11 total points!
There were 7 different winners for the men in this series. The women had 4 different winners- more on that below.
The top three ladies overall were all in the Master’s Division or 40+ years young.

Owl Series

204 different women completed a race. 285 men completed at least one race.
5 men did all 7 races in the series while no women ran in all of them.
There were 7 different winners for the women in this series.
6 different men won a race in the Owl Series. Juan Moran was the only male to win twice (Coldwater Rumble & Mesquite Canyon).
Kevin Tuck took first place in the Open Division in the Owl Series (24K-35K) after finishing second in this series last year. Oh yeah, he’s 61 years old and ran all seven DRT Series races. Now that’s a bad a**.
Speaking of, the entire Open Division for the men were in the “Master’s” classification of over 40 years of age.
Marisa Jenkins won the women’s Master’s Division for the second consecutive year. Joe Labrie won for the men after he placed third in last year’s edition.

Hawk Ultra Series

168 different women completed a race. 319 men completed at least one race.
There were 7 different winners for both the men and women in the Hawk Series.
Only 2 women and 3 men finished 5+ races in this series.
Lisa Moore won her second straight Hawk Ultra Series overall after winning the Mesquite Canyon 50 miler for the second consecutive year!
The entire Open Division podium for the men were 40+ years young and two of them are over 50 years old.
With the Top 3 Master’s men moving to the Open division, Geoffrey Foote will take first place Master’s award in the Ultra division which includes a 100 mile finish at the Coldwater Rumble in January. This was Geoff’s 89th ultra finish!
Honorable Mention: Dean Hansen (62 years old) finished all four spring races to give him what looks to be 82 Ultra finishes. Bill Nictakis (58 years old) finished six of our seven DRT Ultra races. Impressive!!

I also want to specifically mention Keisa Ridgway who ran the Spring Roadrunner series with us and won 3 of the 4 races posting a perfect score of 3,250 points! Super impressive. She also won our McDowell Mountain Frenzy 10 miler in December as a “warm up” to the Spring Series. 🙂

In addition to overall awards, we will also have a masters category for runners 40 years of age or older. New in 2018 for the Quail & Roadrunner Series, we are awarding our top Grand Master’s Division runner for all you bad a** runners still getting after it into your 60’s and 70’s. A junior division overall winner will also be awarded for those of you hitting the trail scene under the age of 17!

Here are a couple things to remember with the Series standings:

-Points are allocated based upon your finish percentage time off the winner’s time.
-We score only your best 3 races in the whole series (of 7 races).
-If you ran 2 races in the Quail division and 3 in the Roadrunner division, they do NOT combine and will be listed in the results separately.
–(Pro-Tip) Mesquite Canyon results are out of 1,250 points rather than the standard 1,000 which can make a significant difference in jumping the rankings.
-If you are 40+ years of age and lead the Open Division, you will be awarded in the Open/Overall Division and your ranking within the Master’s or Grand Master’s Division will go to the next runner on the list.

The final point standings are currently on Ultrasignup can be found here:

Quail Standings (Short Series)
Roadrunner Standings (Middle Series)
Owl Standings (Trail Series)
Hawk Standings (Ultra Series)

Awards will be presented at our April 22 Dam Good Run at Lake Pleasant Regional Park. Join us for a fun day on the lake!

….DRUMROLL PLEASE……….