Engle breaks the tape

It was about time.

Good times. Not-so-good times. And the great times that runners had recording those times at the seventh annual Charlottesville Marathon.

Charles “Chuck” Engle blistered the competition with a 2:38:58 victory. Law student Jacqueline Choi was a little over 30 minutes slower than her time last year. But most of the runners in between agreed that the thrill of conquering the hilly 26.2-mile course was a victory in itself. All told, 1,344 competed in Saturday’s marathon and half marathon.

Engle, a 38-year-old from Dublin, Ohio, said he had something to prove this year.

“I ran the race, I believe it was in 2006, and I went out too fast with this other guy,” said Engle, who speaking of time, calculates his splits in his head. “We just beat each other up over the first 23 miles. The guy in third place just sat back and watched and then he came by us on the 23rd mile and just crushed it.”

This year, Engle wasn’t about to let that happen again.

“I kept looking back because I knew this young man from UVa was behind me,” he said. “They are tenacious runners at UVa. I know.”

Engle hoped to have a two- to three-minute lead at the turn around, and he was right on schedule.

“We ran on a cinder track in high school, so when we hit Ridge Road, it was just like being back in school,” Engle said. “That really motivated me.”

Then he “let go.” Engle ran the last mile at a 5:15 pace.

“I just love to run,” said the man who has lost track of the number of marathons he has completed. It’s somewhere near 170 — 19 of them, so far, this year.

Finishing second (2:48.40) was the young UVa student running in his first marathon.

James Erickson was almost 10 minutes behind Engle, but he slipped past 31-year-old Hugh Owen for second place.

“I haven’t run anything farther that 18 miles before today,” the former UVa cross country runner said. “I owe my success to two great college coaches, Jason Dunn and Brad Hurt, and to my faith for keeping me grounded.”

The art major — who specializes in portraits of people who have experienced homelessness — trained for his first marathon by running 45 minutes a day, five to six days a week.

“I really enjoyed this distance. I was pleasantly surprised that I felt good at 20 miles,” he said. “When I was out on Ridge Road … that was my old training ground for the ACCs.”

Erickson trailed Owen heading into the 23-mile mark, but then the 23-year-old pulled ahead for good.

“There was a big hill at the 15-mile mark,” said Owen, who still speaks with a charming English accent despite calling Arlington home for the past few years. “That kind of bothered me. You are on your own out there a lot. It was hard to stay focused, but it was beautiful.

“My wife went to UVa, so we decided to come back for a relaxing weekend.”

He relaxed after recording a 2:51.02.

Perhaps no one seemed quite as relaxed as Cindy Barbour. The runner from Greensboro, N.C., jumped up and down, twirled around and hugged race volunteers after crossing the finish line in 3:10:20.

“Forty-three,” she shouted. “I’m 43.”

She also was the ninth overall finisher and the first woman. She also qualified for the Boston Marathon.

“I broke my [personal record] by five minutes,” said the blonde who looked like she had enough energy to run another 26 miles. “I didn’t see the 25th- or the 26th-mile markers, so I didn’t know I was near the finish line until I saw the balloons. That’s why I was so excited.

“It was hilly, but I love hills. I felt strong.”

Two local runners, Liz Elko (3:13:17) and Beth Cattone (3:19:41), were second and third, respectively, in the women’s division.

Cattone, 42, who has placed second two years ago, said she started hurting toward the end of the race.

“I ran a 3:15 in Virginia Beach, so I was hoping to get a little closer to that time, but Shamrock was so flat. We have a really great finish here. I love coming down Grady and Preston.”

Elko, 22, said she soaked in all the scenery in her second-place finish. It was her third marathon, but her first here. She said it was one last thing that she wanted to do before graduating and leaving Charlottesville.

“It is definitely the most scenic race I have done,” she said. “My favorite part was watching the horses run up to the fences to see us.”

The half marathoners shared the same course until the turnaround just before mile seven on Garth Road.

Yuri Horwitz, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who went to law school at UVa, led all the runners back to the finish line in 1:16.19. In fact, he was toe-to-toe with Engle for the first four miles.

“I pulled ahead of him at the fifth mile and led the rest of the way,” he said. “My time was a little slower than what I had hoped, but people run this race for the right reason. Coming back, you see runners going the other way cheering for each other.”

He was one of the first to congratulate 22-year-old George Heeschen.

“It was definitely his race,” said Heeschen, the second-place finisher with a time of 1:16:48. “I saw him at the turnaround and he gave me a little high five.”

Heeschen, who is from Earlysville, ran cross-country for Hampden-Sydney College.

Mark Hussa, 21, from Northern Virginia was third at 1:22:30. “I picked it up in the second half of the race,” he said. “I picked off about 10 people.”

Melissa Rittenhouse was among those 10.

The Ohio native, who recently moved to Harrisonburg, averaged a 6:25 pace over the 13.1-mile race. She was the first of three women who finished in the top eight runners overall. Still she said that she had hoped to finish faster than her 1:24:03 clocking.

“I’m not used to the hills around here,” the 32-year-old said, “and I have been injured.”

She has only been training for the past eight weeks after suffering a stress fracture in her knee.

“It was a close race,” the University of Dayton grad said. “The other three girls were really close, closer than I would have liked.”

Tara Guelig, 27, of D.C. was one minute off Rittenhouse’s time at 1:25.04, while Mary Chind, 24, of Lilburn, Ga., followed 33 seconds later at 1:25:37 in third place.

But there were many other good times. Charlottesville’s Tim Frelich enjoyed the cheers from the fans. And he had a lot. He ran the marathon with three orange and blue helium filled balloons wrapped around his head.

“Just call me the Balloon Man,” he said. “Everybody cheered for me the whole way.”

Good times were shared by Fredericksburg’s David Brown and his family. He stopped before the finish of the marathon, adding on to his mileage, just so he could hug his parents who had driven down from Lynchburg.

It was a good time for Ralph Edwards of Palmya, too. He watched at the finish line of the half marathon to hand a long-stemmed yellow tulip to Maggie, his sweetheart and wife of 25 years.

As Horwitz said, it was “Carpe diem.” Seize the day — and enjoy the good times.