Fast time for Spiller

Dusty Spiller finished a day of personal bests as the winner of the 30th annual St. Albert 10-miler.

The 26-year-old Red Deer triathlete tore up the pavement with a blistering 53 minutes and 17 seconds in the fastest 10-miler of his career.

“I'm ecstatic,” Spiller said with an ear-to-ear smile on a sunny Sunday morning. “I held 5:17 per mile so that's really kind of mind boggling to me. It was a PB through 10 K even. I set PBs in every distance today.”

The 20th runner to be crowned King of the Road was also the fastest winner since Travis McKay's 2011 repeat at 52:29 after going 53:01 the year before.

“It's pretty exciting. It means so much to me,” Spiller said. “I do this to be competitive and to win races so it's nice to get a first place early in the year.”

It's his first race victory since the 2012 Woody's RV World half-marathon in Red Deer at 1:14:04.

“I don't have any major tri wins yet but hopefully I can change that this year. I'm trying to bring the swim and bike up to par,” said the accomplished runner. “I like 10 miles. I also like halfs and I'm really strong over 21s.”

Spiller was a question mark to even toe the starting line at his third St. Albert 10-miler and the first since placing 11th overall at 57:20 in 2012.

“I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I actually got food poisoning about a week ago and I just laid in bed for basically the last four days and lost a bunch of weight but I think it played an advantage actually just being lighter,” said the runner-up in the Woody's 10-kilometre race at 36:58 in 2013.

Spiller was one of 11 runners out of 239 finishers, including 108 males, to complete the re-jigged course in under one hour, compared to 15 last year when the figure-eight rolling course of two uphills and two downhills ran north to south instead of this year's reversal in direction.

The start line was on the porch of Heartbreak Hill on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue. The runners eventually soldiered their way up Levasseur Road, then made the long descent down Grandin Road and St. Anne Street before zipping across the Perron Street Bridge and up Mission Avenue into the Lacombe neighbourhood.

“I like the new course actually. I like it starting out with the hill. It kind of separates the men from the boys I guess you could say,” Spiller said. “As soon as they announced the course change and it was going to be that uphill at the start I knew what was going to be the game plan no matter what. You have to go hard out of the start because if someone else goes hard up the hill they might blow up really early.”

Sixteen minutes into the race Spiller crossed Sir Winston Churchill Avenue stride by stride with 2013 champion Jason Jama of Edmonton while motoring down onto St. Anne Street for the start of the northern leg.

A few seconds behind the front-runners were the Edmonton trio of Kieran McDonald, Jevin Monds and Charles Allen.

“I broke away about six K on an uphill and just being super light I think it just played a huge role. Everyone else was just working hard and I just seemed to have that extra gear. I didn't plan on breaking away until 10 but at six I was like let's go for it,” said Spiller.

“I was a lot fitter this year so I think that plays a big difference. I had never made the lead pack before,” noted the culinary nutrition expert and professional triathlete. “I basically spend all my time training.”

FAST TIMES: McDonald finished 16 seconds behind the Killiam product at 53:33 and one second in front of Monds. Allan was fourth at 54:04.

Jama wound up in sixth place at 56:13. His winning time two years ago was 54:02.

The top seven finishers were in the 20 to 29 men's division.

Josh Machney, a Paul Kane High School teacher, was 10th at 59:51.

Visit www.stalbertroadrace.com or www.resultscanada.com for complete race results of the Tech Shop 10-miler.