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Bryan Loy, placing 16th among the men, and Laura Eynon, 10th among the women, were Greensboro's top finishers in the Krispy Kreme Challenge in Raleigh on Saturday.

In the challenger division, the race consisted of a two-mile run to the doughnut stop, consumption of 12 doughnuts and a two-mile run back -- all the while keeping the doughnuts down.

Loy finished the race in 35 minutes and 3 seconds. Chapel Hill's Reese Wells won in 30:20.

Eynon, the 2008 women's winner, completed the event in 44 minutes and 11 seconds. Yvonne Ou of Durham was the first female finisher in 35:20.

Race officials scored 1,290 men's finishers and 154 women. The event was a fundraiser for the N.C. Children's Hospital.

Krispy Kreme challengers results.

Rachel Cole Harrison loves running, and she’ll race you. But she’s going to do it on her own watch.

“I do have a competitive edge, but I try to keep it to what it is,” Harrison says. “It’s something I really want to enjoy. … I really just go with what I feel. If I feel like 20 (miles) one day, I’ll do 20. If I feel like five, I’ll do five.”

Harrison, 27, is a fourth-grade language-arts teacher at General Greene Elementary on Benjamin Parkway. She seems to be full of energy: What fourth-grade teacher can afford otherwise? She’s also fast. Harrison completed the Salem Lakeshore Frosty Fifty, a 31-mile race, last month in four hours and 32 minutes, good for a pace of 8:46 per mile, fourth place among the female finishers and 24th place overall.

But it’s not the racing that fuels her outside the classroom – just the running. Harrison found her first joy in running at age 5, circling her home in Williamsburg, Va. Now she finds great peace in running, alone with her dog and amid the Triad’s beautiful settings.

“My favorite thing is trails,” Harrison says. “I run the roads and greenways, but I love being out in the woods. My partner right now is Dodger; he’s my Weimaraner. He goes everywhere with me. I’ve just been running my whole life. It’s something I’ve always loved. …

“I love people, and I’m a super friend, but I love when I’m off by myself with my dog in the woods. We’ve seen foxes and deer and snakes. The nature of it, I really like that part of it.”

Harrison’s own nature differs from many competitive runners. She can’t give you many details about her racing history because she doesn’t keep track. She wants to pursue ultrarunning, although trying to pin her down on her next race is difficult.

“It’s why I’m so boring,” she says. “I’m really kinda last-minute. If it’s that week, and I know what I want to do, I go do that. I’m hoping to do a 50-miler coming up. I’m trying to look into some 100-milers and see what kind of stuff I want to do from there. But I’m kind of a quiet runner. I don’t talk a lot about it.

“I guess I like to go when I’m ready, on my own time.”

Eleven girls who compete in cross country and/or track and field for four Guilford County high schools are assembling a 210-mile run from Greensboro to Surf City to raise money for earthquake victims in Haiti.

Taylor Rhodes, a sophomore at Northwest, is organizing the event, scheduled to start Feb. 17.

"When I heard about the earthquakes in Haiti," Rhodes writes in an email, "I knew immediately that I wanted to help. So for about the past two weeks I have been putting together a charity run to collect money for Haiti."

She adds: "The girls and I are going to be collecting money at our schools and all throughout our community. We are going to be donating all the money that we collect to a charity called 'Haiti Earthquake Relief, World Witness.' One hundred percent of donations to this charity go to Haiti."

The runners:

Taylor Rhodes, Northwest

Maggie Harahan, Page

Tori Shelton, Southwest

Erin McGuirk, Northern

Jessica Kaat, Northwest

 Alyssa Torres, Northwest

 Sideny Havas, Northwest

 Mandy Bowen, Northwest

 Kelly Snyder, Northwest

 Avery Snipes, Northwest

 Maria Lamore, Page

To contribute: Send a check made out to Lumiere Medical Ministries to P.O. Box 364, Colfax, NC 27235.

To connect on Facebook: 2nd Annual Run 4 Haiti, Chump Change 4 Real Change.

To learn more: Email Taylor Rhodes.

Jen Gapin, who earned a doctorate at UNCG and moved to South Florida in August to take a teaching position at Barry University, finished fifth among the women at Sunday's ING Miami Marathon.

Gapin finished the race in 3 hours, 10 minutes and 56 seconds.

Greensboro's Igal Ben-Gal ran the race in 3:37:36 and was 292nd overall among the 2,904 finishers.

(Above: Laura Eynon, 5 feet 6 and 135 pounds, meeting a serious challenge at following Tip No. 3 at the 2009 race)

Next weekend's Krispy Kreme Challenge will mean one thing for Greensboro's Laura Eynon.

"I want the glory again," says the 2008 women's champion. "I’m in better running shape this year than last year. I just want to get that title back."

The road race, a fundraiser for N.C. Children's Hospital on Feb. 6 in Raleigh, sounds like a fun event. It's a 4-mile race, but "the challenge" is eating a dozen doughnuts at the halfway mark and getting across the finish line without losing them.

Since Eynon excels at doing that, we asked her to offer five tips to winning the Krispy Kreme Challenge:

TIP NO. 1: Go to the starting line hungry.

"I don’t eat the morning of the race," Eynon says. "I go in hungry so that when I hit those doughnuts, I'm ready to eat. But I know some people can’t run without eating. I eat a normal dinner the night before. But I wake up and stay hungry so that when I get to the eating station, I'm really ready to go."

TIP NO. 2: Don't drown the doughnuts.

"It's important that you don’t drink too much water with the doughnuts," she says. "You need some water to help get ‘em down. But after a while, it's like eating too many Saltines. You need some water, but putting a lot in your stomach, you don’t need to put too much water in there also."

TIP NO. 3: Own them.

"You can’t let the doughnuts see you get afraid," Eynon says. "You can’t let ‘em sense your fear. I was looking at some pictures (from last year's race), and in one I look like I’m mid-bite and I was about to cry. I let ‘em see my weakness."

TIP NO. 4: Stretch before you run.

Runners, this isn't exactly what you're thinking. "To borrow a tip from professional speedeaters, you can eat a lot of lettuce and water to stretch your stomach out," Eynon says. "I don’t do that. I just trust that I’ll be able to shove 12 doughnuts into my face because I’ve done it before."

TIP NO. 5: Eyes on the prize.

"Always, the key to remember is the pain is temporary but the pride is forever," she says. "That goes for stuffing your gut, too."

From Off 'N Running Sports:

Come by Off 'n Running this Friday, January 22nd from 6 to 7pm for an "Injury Social"

Jordan McAmmond from Advanced Physical Therapy will be at ONR to discuss achilles tendonitis and tendonosis. There will also be refreshments.

The Myrtle Beach Marathon, set for Feb. 13, is sold out. But a Greensboro runner has a bib for sale. Contact Bobby Ashford to get details.

Officials with the Krispy Kreme Challenge in Raleigh say about 4,300 runners have signed up for the event Feb. 6. They also say the field will cap at 6,000 runners.

To learn more about the event and to sign up, go to the Krispy Kreme Challenge web site.

You can now sign up for the Komen Race for the Cure, scheduled for May 1 in Winston-Salem, at the race’s web site.

Entry fees vary, from free for ages 5 and younger to $30 for ages 13 and older in the timed 5K race.

Event hosts are embracing social media in promoting the event. You can become a fan of the event on Facebook, at facebook.com/komennctriad or follow updates on Twitter at Twitter.com/komenNCtriad.

From the web site: "The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Series, the largest series of 5K runs/fitness walks in the world, raises significant funds and awareness for the fight against breast cancer, celebrates breast cancer survivorship and honors those who have lost their battle with the disease. Since its inception in 1983, the Komen Race for the Cure series has grown from one local Race with 800 participants to a global series of more than 120 Races with more than 1 million people expected to participate in 2009."

If you’re looking for the power of a group, you might want to check out the Greensboro Running Club.

Among the club’s events:

INJURY CLINIC: You can learn more about how you might be suspectible to an injury.

Dr. John O’Halloran, a physical therapist, and Dr. Damien Rodulfo, a chiropractic sports physician, will meet with club members at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Guilford Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Center, 1915 Lendew St.

“They going to talk about potential predisposing factors to common running injuries,” says club president Jim Halsch. “What items, before an injury happens, are already occurring? How do we avoid those types of things?”

For example, Halsch says, “If you have a weak hip and go through the running motions, you’re going to be swaying back and forth, trying to get the center of gravity back and forth. You need to be able to be strong enough to hold your weight on one leg.”

The meeting is open to the public.

GROUP RUNS: The Greensboro Running Club hosts group runs on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Guilford College. The club is also trying to put a more formal structure in place for weekend runs.

HELPING HANDS: Want to do more than run? The GRC is assisting the Winter Emergency shelter at Grace Community Church, 643 W. Lee St., by providing meals on Saturday nights. The WE shelters opened Dec. 1 and will remain open through March.

“It’s surprising the stories that you hear of how these ladies are there,” Halsch says. “Some situations you just can’t believe. Some of the ladies are employed. Some of the ladies had been employed all their lives, and their husbands had been employed all their lives, then all of a sudden they don’t have a place.”

Sound interesting? You can check out the club’s web site, greensbororunningclub.org, or you can visit Thursday night’s session on injuries to learn more. Contact Halsch at 302-3728 or jhalsch1@triad.rr.com.