Vaulting 621 places from last year, 60-year-old Mill Valley resident Jamie Rivers won the 101st Dipsea Race on Sunday, outlasting 71-year-old Hans Schmid of Greenbrae and 2009 Dipsea champion Brian Pilcher of Ross.
Rivers, who finished in 622nd in the 2010 edition of the Dipsea Race because of a hamstring injury, finished with a time of 1 hour, 7 minutes and 34 seconds in the race, which is handicapped by age, gender and past performance.
Rivers, a nurse at UCSF Medical Center who last won the Dipsea in 2007, bested Schmid by 23 seconds, with Pilcher another 24 seconds back. She had a 20-minute head start in the race.
She managed to beat her husband, Roy Rivers, who succumbed to dehydration in the finishing stretch and wound up ninth. The husband-and-wife duo won the Alan Beardall Award for fastest family and helped the Pelican Inn Club end the Tamalpa Running Club’s 34-year reign as the top running team in the race.
As usual, the field was loaded with notables, from Russ Kiernan, owner of 28 of the black shirts that signify a top 35 Dipsea finish, to 1975 Pan American Games marathon silver medalist Chuck Smead of Masca, Colo., who fell this year and finished 20th.
San Rafael resident Alex Varner won his third consecutive fastest time award with an actual run time of 49 minutes and nine seconds. The 25-year-old placed fourth overall in the race.
Liz Gottlieb, 35, of San Rafael, was the fastest female runner, clocking a time of 59:34.
Reilly Johnson, the 9-year-old defending Dipsea Race champion from Mill Valley, finished 90th. Johnson’s 2010 victory cut her handicapped head start from 25 minutes to 19 minutes.
