Anyone watching the 13th annual Woody’s RV World Marathon this past weekend may have heard two starting guns instead of one.

For the first time in the race’s history, a 10 km race was added for those runners who still wanted to be involved, but maybe weren’t up to the task of running the full or half marathon.

Blackfalds native Joshua Sissons, 24, won the inaugural 10K race, finishing the course in just under 36 minutes, while Red Deer College track star Jodi Sanguin won the women’s division with a time of 38 minutes and 23 seconds.

Sanguin also had the second best time out of all the 10K entrants.

In the full marathon, Camrose’s Brendan Lunty, 32, took home first place overall with a time of two hours, 42 minutes, 25 seconds and five milliseconds.

It was the first win for Lunty at the event, who finished in third in 2009 and second in both 2007 and 2008 and ran his first Woody’s marathon in 2003, with a time of three hours and 43 minutes.

On the ladies’ side, Sherwood Park’s Sheila Woitas, 46, won the 42 km race with a final time of three hours, 23 minutes and 14 seconds.

Woitas had previously run the Woody’s marathon in 2005 and 2008.

In the half-marathon, another Camrose native, 41-year-old Robert Renman, won the men’s division, running the 26 km in one hour, 16 minutes and three seconds.

Calgary’s Neasa Coll, 28, who had previously won the Woody’s full marathon in 2009, won the ladies’ division with a time of one hour, 33 minutes and 47 seconds.

Over 1,500 people took part in this year’s event, dubbed “Alberta’s River Race” and organizers say over 61% of runners who took part were from Central Alberta, up from 41% last year, and 97% were from Alberta.

sports@reddeerexpress.com