For a guy who admits he didn't train as much as he probably should have for the Deseret News-Granite Furniture Marathon, Dennis Simonaitis did just fine Friday morning in the 28th annual event. He won it.
"I really hadn't prepared well for this race," said Simonaitis, who nonetheless was $1,000 richer for his first-place time of 2:29:44. "I entered the race thinking I had a chance to maybe place third and pick up some prize money, to be honest. I hoped this might happen, but I didn't think it would."The 36-year-old Simonaitis, who has been one of the top local runners for years, flip-flopped places with his wife, Michelle. Last year Dennis finished second in the men's marathon while his wife won the women's event. This time, while Dennis was winning, Michelle was busy finishing in second place in the women's marathon.
"We just switched places," said Michelle. "That was great. I'm real happy for Dennis."
A pair of ex-DesNews Marathon champions - Alvaro Palacios and Paul Rosser - were the early pacesetters during the mountainous Emigration Canyon portion of the 26.2-mile race. Simonaitis, meanwhile, was back in the pack.
"I started out really conservatively. I was in sixth for quite a while," said Simonaitis. "Then I moved into fifth and then fourth. I just kept passing people."
Palacios, a four-time champion, suffered second- and third-degree burns on both of his legs when he fell into a pit of hot, burning embers 21/2 months ago while running in Mexico. While the injuries were severe and limited his training, it couldn't stop him from running the DesNews Marathon. Pal-a-cios realized about 10 miles into the race that his wouldn't be a Cinderella story of coming back to win his first race back from the injury. His philosophy has always been to lead from start to finish, but near the top of Little Mountain, he surrendered the lead for good.
"At that point I just wanted to finish the race, regardless of how long it took," Palacios said.
And he did finish. Palacios placed 11th overall in a time of 2:47:18.
Simonaitis, meanwhile, finally caught Henno Haava of Astonia as the marathon reached the valley with about four miles remaining.
"He was slowing down a lot, and I really didn't have to force it - which I was happy about because this is a tough course, and I was feeling it."
Simonaitis started to pull away as he got to the parade route and went on to beat Haava (2:32:14), who placed second, by about 21/2 minutes. Rosser, of Salt Lake City, placed third (2:33:24) with a burst of speed in the final 200 meters to edge fourth-place Mike Carlson of Boise (2:33:35).
Ian Solof of Portland finished fifth (2:35:05), with Dave Spence (2:37:50), Criss James (2:40:20), Eugene Greenwood (2:41:52), Dennis Potter (2:44:41) and Alexande Pachev (2:46:13) rounding out the top 10.