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King reigns at XTERRA Trail Run

Trey Garman / 05.12.2011

King, 31, won the XTERRA Trail Run World title for the fourth consecutive year, this time topping a record field at Kualoa Ranch, Oahu, Hawaii, on Sunday, December 4.More than 2,000 runners from around world participated in the event, and in keeping with the tradition, none of them came close to King.

King, an Olympic marathon hopeful from Bend, Oregon, completed the 21.9-kilometer course (13.6 miles) in 1 hour, 21 minutes, 27 seconds. He received $2,000 and a roundtrip airfare from Hawaiian Airlines for the victory. “I’m surprised,” King said. “I knew there was good competition, and to be honest, I wasn’t feeling 100 percent. So at the start, there were three of us and we kind of broke away, and I was surprised that more guys weren’t there with us. Then about halfway, I kind of broke away again and was really surprised to finish here that far ahead.” King said he was suffering from a cold and a sore Achilles. “I don’t know what it is about this race,” he said. “Maybe it’s because of the time of year and the travel, but I never seem to come here fully healthy, so I’m just happy to win it again.”

The XTERRA Trail Run World Championship at Kualoa Ranch was created in 2008, and King has won it every year. It rained on the island of Oahu earlier in the week, but the challenging trails at Kualoa Ranch remained dry for the race. “It was real humid out there,” King said. “It was tough as always. You think you’re through the worst part and then that big hill comes up at you, so this race is always challenging.”

Peter Pechek of the Czech Republic was this year’s runner-up, finishing with a time of 1:22:56. It was his first time racing in Hawaii. “It’s a very difficult race,” Pechek said. “The downhills were really hard for me. I ran with (King) for the first 10K, then he got ahead. We have zero degrees in the Czech Republic right now, so to run in this hot weather was difficult, too.”

Ben Bruce of San Diego, California, was third in 1:23:01 – just five seconds behind Pechek. Bruce was in second for most of the course, but got caught in a logjam of the slower runners who were getting lapped. “For me, this is totally out of my realm,” Bruce said. “I’m usually a track runner, and I do better on the roads. But it was chaos toward the end there, and I wasn’t expecting that. I kind of had to dodge the (slower) runners and got bumped and almost fell and that’s kind of when (Pechek) passed me.” Bruce has participated in the XTERRA Trail Run World Championship three times and has finished second (2008) and third twice (2009 and 2011). “Any time you can run in a place like this, it’s worth it,” said Bruce, who decided to enter the race just three days earlier. “I have a lot of stuff on my schedule right now, but when I saw I had a chance to come, I booked it.”

The Puzey brothers finished fourth and fifth. Thomas Rivers Puzey, a student at nearby Brigham Young University-Hawaii, was fourth in 1:25:45. His older brother Jacob Puzey was fifth in 1:26:59. “The funny thing is I never saw him the whole time,” said Thomas Rivers. “As soon as I finished, the first thing I thought of was him and where he was so I turned around and he was right behind.”

Jeffrey Moreland of Reno, Nevada, was sixth, followed by Brandon Laan from Canada.