Native teen wins 7 Mile Bridge Run in Florida Keys

MARATHON, Fla. — A Florida teenager and an Atlanta girl gained the general males’s and ladies’s divisions Saturday at a footrace throughout the longest of 42 freeway bridges over water within the Florida Keys.

Vaclav “Vance” Bursa, 15, of Huge Pine Key, Florida, completed first general within the annual 7 Mile Bridge Run, posting a time of 41 minutes, 1 second and likewise claiming the highest spot within the males’s division. Bursa, who positioned third within the 2022 race, is a scholar at Marathon Excessive College.

Joanna Stephens, 28, of Atlanta, accomplished the course in 41:12 to win the ladies’s division title and place second general. Final yr’s winner, Collin Wainwright, 27, of Springfield, Pennsylvania, and Joel Martinez, 31, of Cape Coral, Florida, completed in 41:33 and 41:45, respectively, to take second and third place within the males’s division.

Holly Smith, 38, from Key Largo, Florida, posted a girls’s division second-place time of 42:10. Key West, Florida, resident Shelby Nowak, 28, positioned third with a time of 46:51.

The race, capped at 1,500 runners annually, drew opponents from 41 U.S. states and different nations together with Canada, the U.Ok. and Switzerland.

The run closed the span between the Center and Decrease Keys to vehicular visitors for 3 hours Saturday.

The April contest is likely one of the hottest working occasions within the southeastern United States, and the race subject crammed inside minutes after on-line registration opens in January.