Bell and Linn Repeat Half-Marathon Wins at Thrill in the Hills

Marchette and Domin take top honors in full-marathon

Based on her success rate, Elena Linn might want to think about entering more trail races.

Linn, who is from Marietta, Ga., won the women's half-marathon course of the XTERRA Thrill in the Hills Trail Run for the third consecutive year on Saturday (Feb. 26) at Fort Yargo State Park, Winder, Ga.

"I love this race - one of my friends did it with me that first year and I've been coming back ever since," said Linn, 25. "But other than this one, that's about it."

There are many other runners from the area who love the race, as it drew a capacity field of 500 runners. The event featured two distances - a 42-kilometer full-marathon, and a 21-kilometer half-marathon.

The course itself was a challenging 21-kilometer loop that traversed up and down the hills at Fort Yargo State Park (the full-marathon runners had to complete the loop twice).

Teale Marchette of Dahlonega, Ga., won the full-marathon race, completing the course in 3 hours, 5 minutes, 43 seconds. He ran alone in front of the pack for the entire second loop. Runner-up Christian Powell of Austin, Texas, came in at 3:19:16.

"This was actually my first marathon on a trail, so I wasn't expecting to win," said Marchette, 23. "I had a couple of buddies who did the half-marathon so I ran with them. When they finished, I kept going by myself and never really saw anybody else."

Marie Domin of Mount Pleasant, S.C., was the first female finisher for the full-marathon course with a time of 3:39:26.

Most of the entries were in the half-marathon, and David Bell of Atlanta prevailed for the second consecutive year on the 21-kilometer course. He finished with a time of 1:17:06 beating second-place Chris Wiley by 26 seconds.

Linn, a former all-conference track runner at Georgia Tech, said she took the lead in the women's field early in the course and maintained the lead throughout.

"This course is always great," she said. "All the ups and downs are really challenging, and there was this one section with some really tall grass that made it tough."

The event was the fifth of six races in the 2011 XTERRA Georgia Trail Run Series. The top runners in each respective age group earned points toward the cumulative season standings. The final event in the series will be the XTERRA Deep South Trail Run in June.

At the end of the season, each age-group champion will receive a free entry to the XTERRA Trail Run National Championship at Ogden, Utah, on Sept. 25.

For complete results from the Thrill in the Hills race, and more information on the XTERRA Georgia Series, please visit www.dirtyspokes.com or www.xterratrailrun.com.

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