Breaking: Hal kisses the rock...
After 24 hours and 50 minutes and 13 seconds of running TNF runner Hal Koerner tasted sweet victory at the Hardrock 100 in Colorado. After being out-front since Ouray (mile 43), Koerner took one of the world’s toughest 100’s from Joe Grant…
Hal Koerner - Hardrock 100 winner 2012
With some fantastic live coverage from iRunFar crew Bryon Powell and Meghan Hicks, the race unfolded to be a battle between Koerner, Tansvulcania winner and Hardrock 2011 runner-up Dakota Jones, and Grant.
After getting close to Hal, Jones faded in the last 20 miles of the race to finish third, and it was the fast-finishing Arc’teryx runner Grant who took Koerner close, but not close enough, finishing around 16 minutes back in 25:06:30. A tired Jones eventually rolled-in to Silverton in 25:45:08.
Such was the quality of the 2012 event that Koerner and Grant’s efforts were the third and fourth fastest Hardrock times in history.
Joe Grant
After leading for much of the race women’s 2011 winner Diana Finkel had to drop from the race with around 87 miles covered. This left the gate wide open from 2011 runner-up Darcy Africa, who was lying second when Finkel had to unfortunately depart the race. With around 25 hours on the clock Africa had a sizeable lead over Krissy Moehl and Rhonda Claridge and looked set fair in this hardest of hard 100 milers which scales a gulp-worthy 34,000ft of climb.
We’ll bring you the women’s results, more reporting and images in the coming hours…
Reactions so far
Tony Mollica Jul 15, 12:31 AM
What a difficult race course Hardrock is to run that fast! Congratulations to Hal, Darcy and all of the other runners!