The mountain running season kicked off Saturday with Crazy Lazy V in Palmer, a six-mile run that starts at the Lazy Mountain trail head, and rises and drops about 3,200 feet. The race is the first of the Alaska Mountain Runners Grand Prix, a series of seven races that take place over the summer.
Runners with Kenai Peninsula connections won both the men’s and women’s races. On the women’s side, Denali Strabel, a 2008 graduate of Seward High School, won at 1:17:53, while Seward’s Hannah Lafleur was second at 1:18:14. Julianne Dickerson, who was born and raised in Kenai and graduated from Wings Christian Academy in 2006 but now lives in Anchorage, was third at 1:22:36, while 2015 Soldotna High School graduate Sadie Fox placed ninth at 1:32:04.
The men’s race went to 2009 Cook Inlet Academy graduate Lars Arneson in 1:07:14, while Seward’s Erik Johnson, a perennial Mount Marathon contender, was 11th in 1:15:48.
