EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated to correct the distance of the run from 5 kilometers to 10 kilometers, and to remove the correct the city of Storm King CrossFit.
PORT ANGELES — Luke Moilanen crossed the finish line at Hollywood Beach 14 minutes ahead of anyone else to win the first reinstallment of The Big Hurt.
Moilanen, Port Angeles resident, completed Saturday’s four-stage endurance race in 4 hours, 32 minutes and 44 seconds to take first in the Iron Male division.
Catherine Copass, also of Port Angeles, won the Iron Female division, and the four-person Sound Bikes & Kayaks won the team championship.
With eight individual racers and 24 teams of four, the first running of The Big Hurt since 2004 drew a total of 104 competitors.
Moilanen, 29, won three of the four stages and took second in the fourth.
Moilanen jumped out to a two-minute lead over Shea Quinn by finishing the opening 16-mile mountain bike ride on logging roads, the Foothills Trail and through the city in 1:17:56.
After recording the second-best time in the 3-mile kayak on Port Angeles Harbor (41:11), Moilanen added to his lead by riding the 30-mile road bike leg in 1:50:14.
He finished with a time of 43:23 in the 10-kilometer run out-and-back on the Olympic Discovery Trail that started and finished at Hollywood Beach.
Craig Fulton won the kayak stage with a time of 40:17, and was in second place until the 10K run when Quinn out-ran him by nearly 13 minutes to take second overall (4:47:34).
Fulton placed third with a time of 4:56:48.
Quinn, 28, and Fulton, 53, also live in Port Angeles, and all six Iron Male division competitors were from the North Olympic Peninsula.
Former Port Angeles High School football coach Tom Wahl, 57, came in fourth (5:03:03), and former Sequim basketball and track and field standout Jayson Brocklesby, 21, was fifth (5:33:23).
Port Angeles’ Jared Scott, 37, was sixth with a time of 5:39:02.
Copass, 43, won three of the four women’s stages to beat out fellow Port Angeles resident Gay Hunter, 63, in the two-person Iron Female division with a time of 5:12:20.
Hunter finished in 5:55:32. She won the kayak leg with a time of 44:47 to Copass’ 47:37.
Copass took an early 22-minute lead by completing the race-opening mountain bike ride in 1:26:06.
She also had the better times in the road bike (2:02:43) and the 10K (55:54).
The Port Angeles-based Sound Bikes & Kayaks team didn’t win any of the stages, but overall it was nearly seven minutes (4:01:36) better than second-place Storm King CrossFit of Port Angeles (4:08:12).
Joey Ciarlo opened with the second-best mountain bike ride, 1:05:47, for Sound Bikes & Kayas. Vicki Heckman was fifth in the kayak stage (36:40), David Rodgers was fifth in the road bike stretch (1:33:30) and Joe DeScala was fifth-fastest of 24 runners in the 10K (45:39).
All but two of the teams were from either Port Angeles or Sequim.
The Gritty Tacomans of Tacoma took seventh, and Hurtin’ For Certain of Bellevue placed eighth.
“I thought it was excellent,” Lorrie Mittman, who organized the event along with Tim Tucker and Scott Tucker, said Sunday.
“I don’t think we could have hoped for anything better than that.
“We had tons of support form the city of Port Angeles. And lots of volunteers.”
Mittman said that the organizers hope that The Big Hurt will be an even bigger event going forward.
