Corrected version
A strong and hearty field of runners lined up in front of the Leflore County Courthouse Saturday morning for the start of the fourth annual Viking Half Marathon and 5K Run.
In total, 545 runners from across the state and throughout the country registered to take part in Saturday’s events. Registrations for this year's event were up noticeably from last year as the event continues to be a growing spring tradition in Greenwood.
After a week of balmy temperatures, the mercury dipped for Saturday morning’s start to just below 40 degrees, leaving many runners shivering in the early morning air and ready to get the blood pumping on the course.
Runners gathered near the finish line of the race — enjoying complimentary food and a performance by Greenwood-area band Delta Crossing — spoke highly of the dozens of volunteers that lined the course, passing out water and cheering on the competitors.
“They have some good course support out there, some really nice volunteers that cheered us on,” said Jim Brown of Tupelo, who won the half marathon for the second straight year at a blistering 5:44-mile pace. “You couldn’t beat the weather today either.”
“I was cheering with them the whole way,” said runner Tanya Ziyad, an engineer at Viking who was participating in her first 5K. “They were great. There was even someone with pom poms at one point.”
Jim and Sharon Brown of Jackson — no relation to the race’s champion — said the brisk weather was perfect for racing and that they thoroughly enjoyed their first time participating in the event.
“There was beautiful weather, I loved the route winding through all the homes — and the Alluvian is always worth the trip,” said Sharon Brown. "We love coming to Greenwood. Y’all are just so darn hospitable.”
Cheryl Smith and Andy Monfree, both of Russellville, Ark., and Jeri Hudgins of Greenville all ran the race together in honor of a recently deceased relative — and only hours after hitting the track in Greenville for the Washington County Relay for Life fundraiser.
“We walked all night and ran all morning,” Monfree said. “It’s one of the best I’ve ever done. We did (a half marathon in) Little Rock about a month ago and it wasn’t nearly as nice as this.”
Smith, a veteran of a number of road races but a first-time competitor in Greenwood, said she really enjoyed how the race’s course snaked through the leafy, tree-lined streets of North Greenwood. “I’d never seen how pretty the neighborhoods here are,” Smith said.
Pete Petrin, a math teacher at Amanda Elzy High School, completed the half marathon for the second straight year, just over a month after finishing up his first full marathon in Greenville.
Looking over his time shortly after finishing the race, Petrin said he was thrilled to have hit his goal for the race — finishing in less than 2 hours and 20 minutes — by a margin of 19.3 seconds, a time he said was helped along by the enthusiastic and vocal volunteers, including a large contingent of students, parents and staff from Elzy.
Andrea Turner, a Greenwood native who now lives in Cleveland, said she’d convinced her close friend Amanda West to join her for this year’s race. The pair said they were happy with their finishing times in the 5K, especially after the cold winter put a real damper on their training regimen.
“I was impressed,” Turner said. “We’ve been slacking bad so I felt pretty good.”
“I was proud to be able to run the whole thing without walking,” West said. “Next year I’m going to try to improve my time, though.”
Linda Porterfield of Memphis, who’s been running in the 5K since the race started in 2012, said she keeps coming back because the event has “every single thing I look for in running — it’s truly beautifully done.”
Porterfield, 60, said she was thrilled to have beaten runners decades younger than herself — she called some of the other racers she’d fended off at the end “babies.” A medical researcher in Memphis, Porterfield said she was spending the entire weekend staying at the Alluvian hotel and was looking forward to checking out some of the shops and restaurants in Greenwood after the race.
Beth Stevens, executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, said the strong show of community pride and the influx of out-of-town racers — who made up about 80 percent of the runners this year — puts some of the best aspects of Greenwood on display.
“We always enjoy the opportunity to show off our community,” Stevens said. “We’ve developed a reputation for events that’s second to none.”
Stevens credited the strong show of volunteers and the support of the city of Greenwood’s public works and police departments with allowing the event to come off without a hitch.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that registrations for the 2015 race were the most in the event's four-year history. In fact, the first Viking Half Marathon and 5K Run in 2012 attracted the largest crowd to date.
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
