Email  Print

Valley’s Jensen, 11, top GunBunFunRun 5K women’s finisher

 

The Napa-to-Sonoma Wine Country Half Marathon organizers at Destination Races weren’t able to award the inaugural “GunBunFunRun” 5K’s top women’s finisher with her normal first-place prize of a bottle of wine last Sunday because they didn’t expect an 11-year-old girl to win the women’s portion of the race.

But that’s exactly what happened as Sonoma’s Quinn Jensen, 11, not only outraced all the other 181 women in the GunBunFunRun 5K field for first-place, but she also out-ran 64 men for an equally impressive fourth-place overall finish, with an outstanding time of 21 minutes, 53.8 seconds.

Looks like Jensen’s eye-opening effort will not only capture the attention of other runners and followers of the sport, but it will also make the race organizers put together back-up awards for a growing generation of talented young runners.

Also finishing in the GunBunFunRun 5K women’s top-20 from the Valley were fifth-place Jenny Hinman’s 24:58.8, 11th-place Shannon Reiter’s 26:02.8, and 13th-place Robin Jensen’s 26:49.3.

Sonoma’s lone GunBunFunRun 5K men’s top-20 finisher was Lance Jensen’s 16th-place in 25:28.5, with the race’s winner being Sean Lilley from Austin, Texas, in 19:07.1.

Also, the Valley's top Napa-to-Sonoma Wine Country Half Marathonfinisher, Glen Ellen's John Litzenberg, was an overall ninth-place, and not 12th-place, finisher, as well as the winner of his 40-to-44-year-old age group with a time of 1:15.36.