Liberty Mountain Trail Series kicks off with annual Deep Hollow races

More than 240 area residents and Liberty University students, faculty, and staff hit the trails on Liberty Mountain on Saturday morning for the 20th annual Deep Hollow Half Marathon and 5K, the first of five race events in this year’s Liberty Mountain Trail Series.

Both races took participants through the university’s sprawling Liberty Mountain Trail System, which includes 50 square miles of trails across 3,400 acres.

The 5K course is an out-and-back race with spectacular views, starting by the newly expanded Hydaway Lakeand taking runners to Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre before returning lakeside. The half marathon winds around almost the entirety of the trail system, reaching an elevation of 1,285 feet at its highest point, with six water stations along the course.

In the half marathon, 18-year-old Wyatt Zealand finished first for the men with a time of 1 hour, 34 minutes, and 50 seconds, and 21-year-old Jill Crunkilton finished first for the women, with a time of 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 25 seconds. In the 5K, 16-year-old Joshua Mignard finished first with a time of 17 minutes, 39 seconds, and 18-year-old Alaina Swartzlander was the first female to finish, with a time of 20 minutes and 53 seconds. Complete race results are available online.

The Liberty Mountain Trail Series continues the university’s mission of promoting healthy living on and off campus. Liberty employees could use the race to complete the athletic event challenge for Live Well Liberty, a new initiative designed to encourage faculty and staff to prioritize health.

“One of our goals in the Campus Recreation Office is to impact the holistic health of everybody who participates in our programs,” Director of Outdoor Recreation Katy Clay said. “Running fits that to a tee, and we get to enjoy God’s creation while we’re doing that.”

“We’ve got the physical well-being with the running aspect, but we also have the emotional and social well-being with the crowds that are involved,” she added. “Then we also try to tie in the spiritual well-being with prayer and being good stewards of our people and shepherding them as well as we can, to prepare them ahead of time and to equip them during the race and then encouraging them after the race too because what they did is awesome.”

Deep Hollow is the premier race event in for the Liberty Mountain Trail Series and is open to the public. Liberty has been hosting the Deep Hollow Half Marathon since 2007 and 5K since 2008. The Trail Series first began in 2009 and has included different races throughout the years before arriving at the current five that make up the series today.

Each event in the series offers a different set of challenges. The next race, the Valley View Mike Donahue Memorial 5-Miler, will take place Nov. 7 and is open to the public; military personnel can race at a discounted rate. The fall semester of the series will wrap up with the Reindeer Run 2-Miler on Dec. 5, before continuing in the spring with the Arctic 5K on Feb. 6 and the King of the Mountain 1-mile uphill race on March 6.

Many of the racers on Saturday were unaffiliated with Liberty, including married couple Tyler and Kayla Guido. They began running together earlier this year and signed up for the races to challenge themselves. Tyler Guido ran the half marathon, and Kayla Guido ran the 5K — a first for both.

“We’ve been wanting to get more active, and we tried to get in the half marathon for Richmond, but it got all locked up quick,” Tyler Guido said. “So, we figured this would be a good one to do.”

“We thought it would be a great goal to reach,” Kayla Guido said. “I hadn’t run ever until January this year, and started training to do a race and we found this one. It was right here in town, which was very nice, and it’s a great trail system, too.”

For Elizabeth Willis, a junior exercise science student at Liberty and an RA on the Hill, Deep Hollow offered a bonding opportunity.

“My leadership team and I are running together,” Willis said. “It’s exciting to learn something new about God through His creation and running it out on the trails.”

“We wanted to build community, have fun, and push our limits, see what we’re able to do,” added junior Grace Kopec, an elementary education student.