Molly Huddle won the women’s race in a course record 1:08:31 and Leonard Korir ran 1:01:06 to edge his Kenyan training partner Stephen Sambu by inches in the men’s race at the United Airlines New York City Half-Marathon, Sun., March 15.

The race started at Central Park, took runners through Times Square and finished in Lower Manhattan.

“I’ll Take Manhattan” seems to be the new theme song for Molly Huddle, the 30-year-old Notre Dame graduate from Providence, R.I., who is carving out quite a road racing reputation for herself in the Big Apple. She won the Oakley New York Mini 10K in American record time (31:37) last June, and even though she said after Sunday’s race, “It wasn’t really on my mind to win. I just wanted to run as fast as I could today and see how my winter training was going to pay off,” you’d never have known it by the way she ultimately took the race by the throat with her front running tactics and her relentless accelerations.

Things started out tamely enough as Huddle initially tucked herself into a 12-woman lead pack that included Kenyans Joyce Chepkirui and Sally Kipyego. Huddle kept checking her wristwatch as if she was on a tempo run, but this was no training run, however.

“It was a lot harder than a workout for sure,” Huddle said afterwards, “but I just wanted to make sure I kept track of my splits. I figured it would help me PR if I could at least keep my splits and know where I was. I was prepared for everything.”

After the women’s lead group had left Central Park and raced through Times Square, there were only seven women remaining at the front, then it was down to five: Huddle, Kipyego, Chepkirui, two-time champion Caroline Rotich and Rhia El Moukim of Morocco.

Huddle started a series of surges once the leaders turned on to the West Side Highway just before eight miles. First, El Moukim of Morocco was dropped, two miles later Kipyego and Rotich fell back, all because of what Good Golly, Miss Molly was doing at the front! Now it was down to Huddle and Chepkirui…

Several times Chepkirui came up to Huddle’s shoulder looking to pass, only to be denied each time by the reigning U.S. 5000-meter track champion, who also holds the U.S. 5000-meter record of 14:42.64 and has a personal best of 30:47.59 for the 10,000 meters on the track!

The two entered the Battery Park Underpass together, but thanks to still another acceleration by the emerging road star from Rhode Island, when they came out of the approximately one-kilometer long tunnel, Huddle was well in front.

Chepkirui, who's 26, had never run the course before, Huddle had (she was third in this race last year), so Chepkirui was unfamiliar with the tunnel and Huddle’s final move seemed to take her by surprise.

Huddle said later, “Just knowing that the tunnel was roughly a (kilometer) long (was an advantage), ‘cause last year I remember thinking, ‘When will this tunnel end?’ It was just good to know how much I had left, and when I was getting tired that it wasn’t really that bad.”

After emerging from the tunnel, Huddle extended her lead all the way to the finish line, her winning time of 1:08:31 equaling Sally Kipyego’s record in winning last year. This was the first time an American woman had won this race in the 10-year history of the event.

Ckepkirui clocked 1:08:42 in finishing second.

Sally Kipyego, 29, was third in 1:09:39, and Caroline Rotich, 30, fourth in 1:09:53.

In case you’re wondering, the U.S. women’s record for the half-marathon is 1:06:57, set by Kara Goucher in Newcastle – South Shields, Britain in 2007.

That underpass where Huddle clinched her victory on Sunday played a major role in the men’s race as well. Although that’s not where the men's race was decided (that happened in the last yard of the race!), it set the stage for the thrilling duel between Kenyan training partners Leonard Korir and Stephen Sambu, who are based in Tucson, Ariz., where they’re coached by the University of Arizona’s James Li.

Sambu, who's only 26, was the one exerting most of the pressure up front, which whittled down the lead pack accordingly as the miles passed.

“I like running in front all the time, I like pushing the pace,” Sambu explained after the race. “For me, I don’t like going slow. From the beginning we start pushing and pushing, and the group started reducing and reducing.”

Although the field included U.S. Olympians Dathan Ritzenhein and Meb Keflezighi, thanks to Sambu’s aggressive running, by the time the leaders entered the Battery Park Underpass there were only four runners left at the front – Sambu, Korir, South Africa’s Lusapho April and Mexico’s Juan Luis Barrios. However, by the time they emerged from the tunnel, the two Kenyans were by themselves in the lead!

Sambu accelerated again and opened a five-meter gap, but Korir fought back.

Later Korir, who's 28, explained, “I think with a half mile to go, I know Stephen was very strong. So I was telling myself, ‘I’ll be number two, number two.’ But (then) I saw Stephen was not going, and something was in my head. You know what (I was thinking), ‘Win this thing, win this thing.’ I just gave it all I got and I found myself (in front) on the finish line.”

Short of a photo finish, you really couldn’t have a much closer finish in a road race – and, remember, this was a half-marathon! They were timed in 1:01:06 and 1:01:07, although it seemed closer than that. As it is, this tied the record for the closest finish in the history of the race.

Sambu said afterwards, “I thought it was my day. That’s why I was pushing a lot. But it didn’t happen. Next time.”

Korir, who received $20,000 for winning, said, “It was really a very good race. I went to school here (he graduated from Iona University in New Rochelle, N.Y.). I wanted to give all I could to win this race because I love this place. I think New York is a very good atmosphere for me to run in.”

Although gracious in defeat, Stephen Sambu couldn’t hide the fact that losing the race on the line like that hurt, not to mention that it cost him more than a little pocket change.

“I know I was almost at the finish line,” he said, “I was so close. It was painful.”

Mexico’s Juan Luis Barrios, 31, finished third in 1:01:14, South Africa’s Lusapho April, 32, was fourth in 1:01:21.

The first American in the race was Andrew Bumbalough, 28, of Portland, Maine. Making his half-marathon debut, he finished fifth in 1:02:04, three seconds ahead of Dathan Ritzenhein, who’s now 32 and lives in Belmont, N.Y.

The remarkable Meb Keflezighi 39, of San Diego, Calif., finished eighth in 1:02:17, a very nice tune-up for next month’s Boston Marathon, where he hopes to defend the title he won in such dramatic fashion last year.

If Molly Huddle’s theme song now appears to be “I’ll Take Manhattan,” surely Meb Keflezighi’s has to be “Ol’ Man River,” for like that song says, he just keeps rollin’ along.

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