“I hadn’t even heard of the race until last night,” Reed said Saturday, shortly after winning the 10K Bean Run with a time of 35 minutes, 16 seconds. “I picked this one because I wanted to go to the (Tracy Dry) Bean Festival. That was a big selling point for me.”
Reed, 33, has a race somewhere every weekend, usually in the 50-mile ultra-marathon category. On Saturday, he was among 296 athletes to run through neighborhoods near Lincoln Park on Eaton Avenue and along MacArthur Drive before returning to Lincoln Park.
Reed made a final push to come in ahead of George Cross, 46, of Tracy (35:25), who had expected to improve on his second-place finish at the 2011 Bean Run.
“I thought he was 100 yards behind me, and suddenly at the end he catches me and takes off,” Cross said.
Cross said he was still happy to place second again and claim first place in the men’s 40-49 division.
Marika Kouda, 37, of Tracy, won the women’s 10K race (45:26). She also won the 10K bean run in 2010 and said that while she doesn’t compete regularly, she enters local runs in Tracy and Mountain House.
Winner of the men’s 5K race was Javier Maciel, 41, of Modesto (17.53). He has been running since his cross country and track and field days at Tracy High, where he graduated in 1990. He beat his fifth-place overall finish during last year’s Bean Run as he came in a full minute faster than second-place runner Greg Mandler (18:53), of Elk Grove.
“I could have went a little faster, but there was nobody by me to push me,” Maciel said.
Women’s 5K winner Betty Topping, 42, of Tracy, finished the course in 20:14. That sets a starting mark for her as she trains for her next marathon.
“It fits in perfectly, because it’s a tempo run,” Topping said.
She said that she and her husband, Sean Topping, who placed fourth overall in Saturday’s 5K Bean Run (19:24), will run the California International Marathon from Folsom to Sacramento on Dec. 2. She explained that they want to make up for the Boston Marathon back in April — a race they were happy just to survive, as it was run on an especially hot day.
Other runners joined in for fun or to measure their personal progress as they add athletic activity into their lives.
The youngest runner was Michael Clark, 7, of Tracy (37:53, 5K), and the oldest was Robert Juntz, 79, of Hayward (33:47, 5K).
The first-, second- and third-place finishers in the 5K men’s 18-and-under division — 13-year-old Andrew Priela-Soto (22:59), 12-year-old Paolo DeLosSantos (23:27) and 11-year-old Joshua Hernandez (24:08) — were all from Discovery Charter School, part of a Tracy Learning Center contingent that included 37 young runners.
Anna Serrato, 47, of Tracy, said the 10K Bean Run, which she finished in 52:40, was her first race. She was challenged by other family members who ran along with her.
“I just decided to get healthy, and I’ve been running,” she said. “I run three miles all the time, so I figured to give me a challenge I’d do the 10K.”
Chris Waters, 50, also has athletic children — Cassidy, a senior on West High’s swim and water polo teams, and Conner, a freshman on West’s cross country team.
“Last year (at the Bean Run) was my first race in years,” Waters said. “I didn’t want to get old anymore. I needed to start doing something.”
Waters placed eighth overall in the 5K and first in the men’s 50-59 division (20:56).
“Today went good,” he said. “I did a P.R. (personal record) today. I took off about a minute from last year’s race.”
Lydia Young, 15, of Tracy, finished fourth overall and first in the 18-and-under women’s division in the women’s 5K (21:59). The West High junior learned to love distance running after getting involved in athletics as a sprinter and jumper for the Wolf Pack track and field team.
“I started because my friends said cross country would help me with track,” she said. “I tried it and I was good at it, so I stayed with it.”
Full results of the Bean Run are at www.onyourmarkevents.com.
• Contact Bob Brownne at 830-4227 or brownne@tracypress.com.
Looking forward to next years bean run!