Two weeks after about 140 bicycle racers drew virtually the whole town streetside as they zipped through a wet, rainy Calistoga, nearly 2,300 runners — 1,822 of whom finished the Napa Valley Marathon — left town at precisely 7 a.m. Sunday, in near-darkness for a cool, rainy and scenic jaunt to Napa.

For some, the course that snakes it way through 26.2 miles of some of Napa County’s most beautiful areas is like a personal vacation — while for others it’s a qualifier for bigger and better things, including the Boston Marathon.

“I love this marathon. It’s beautiful, and even in the rain it’s great fun,” said Vu Tran, a diminutive, youthful woman who drove up to Calistoga just to run all the way back to Napa in her second-ever marathon. She was speaking while a massage therapist worked her over on a massage table after she had finished the race.

“Just running past the vineyards, seeing the flowers and the other runners and people along the way, was so awesome and beautiful — I will definitely come back to Napa next year,” Tran said. “My hammies are sore, since I pulled one (hamstring) a few days ago while training, but I wanted to run anyway because the course is so beautiful.”

The winners

Just across the crowded gymnasium from where Tran and dozens of other runners were being twisted, pushed and pulled back into shape after the run, event organizers were preparing for the so-called weigh-in of the winners.

Peter Gilmore of San Mateo and Mary Coordt of Elk Grove — the men’s and women’s overall title winners of the 31st annual Kaiser Permanente Napa Valley Marathon — would leave the event with their medals, bragging rights for finishing first, and most importantly some might suggest, their weight in wine, donated by the vintners of the Silverado Trail Vintners association.

Both runners had finished well ahead of their competition. Gilmore’s winning time was 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 4 seconds, the second fastest men’s time at this race in the past 15 years. Coordt topped all women with a finishing time of 2 hours, 48 minutes and 54 seconds.

Coordt’s Sunday win was her third Napa Valley Marathon victory. She also won here in 1997 and 2005. It was Gilmore’s first marathon win.

The weigh-in

While Gilmore and Coordt were preparing to park their weary bones onto a giant scale, a chair on one side, a tray of wood on the other, to be weighed, event co-director Rich Benyo told the 200 or so spectators milling around the gym that winners are usually told to fill their pockets with rolled coins, or rocks — anything to make them weigh more so they can carry home more wine.

“The lady winner gets to be weighed first, because, well, because it’s always ladies first,” joked Benyo.

Coordt did that suggestion one better. As she approached the scale it appeared that since finishing the race she’d sprouted two more legs, two more arms and even a second head – the latter partially hidden beneath the hood of a translucent, green poncho.

But the race had not turned Coordt into a mutant runner. Instead of stuffing her pockets with heavy stones or rolled coins she stuffed her jacket with Christine Iwahashi of West Sacramento, the only other three-time female Napa Valley Marathon winner, who earned her titles in 1986, ‘87 and ‘90.

The two, maneuvering in tandem within the poncho, perched precariously on the wooden seat — Coordt atop Iwahashi’s slender lap — to match the weight of five cases of wine.

“I think Mary (Coordt) is awesome,” said Iwahashi. “This is a very special race for both of us.”

Gilmore now knows, he weighs about the same as two women runners — weighing in at five cases.

Just great fun

There were five runners from Calistoga in this year’s marathon: fifth-grade teacher Bruce Hitchko, whose Napa Valley Marathon was his eighth; Chris Canning, general manager of Calistoga Beverage Company; Gilberto Garcia; Joe Ramirez; and Sherry Hill, who has been running since junior high school. Hill has run several half-marathons, but didn’t run her first marathon until the Big Sur Marathon five years ago.

“Running this course is just a great time,” Hitchko said during the drive back to Calistoga. “There’s no way to fully describe the feeling you get when you’re out there, alone, and the only thing you hear is the slap, slap, slap of your own feet, the flap of your jacket in the wind, the sound of another runner approaching, and even the rain, it all combines magically to create the greatest feeling in the world.”

Hitchko, who gives his students extra credit for showing up at the 7 a.m. starting time on the Silverado Trail to meet and collect autographs from the other runners, uses the Napa Valley Marathon to qualify for the bigger Boston Marathon. He will be running in Boston in about seven weeks, he said. That marathon will be his fourth.

“It’s getting so that I know some of the other runners in Boston,” Hitchko said. “I’ve also learned that instead of staying at an expensive hotel for a couple hundred bucks, I check into a hostel where it only costs $35-$50, and I get to meet some very interesting people. It’s a great time, too.”

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