HOLLYWOOD — There is a moment in the Runyon Canyon 10K, roughly a mile and a half in, where the fire road tilts up toward the ridge and the field goes quiet — not out of focus, exactly, but out of breath.
That silence is the race’s true character, and it returned Sunday for the first time since 2019, when a scheduling tangle and then a few unrelated years of disruption put the event on an unplanned hiatus. Some 400 runners gathered at the Fuller Avenue gate a little after seven, before the canyon’s famous parade of hikers, dogs and influencers had fully assembled, and set off up a course that gains most of its elevation in a hurry and gives almost none of it back until you’ve earned it twice.
The winner, Tomás Errico, 26, a coach at a running store in the Valley, crossed in 41 minutes and 12 seconds, well clear of the field, and was gracious enough afterward to lie about how it felt. “Comfortable,” he said, hands on his knees, in a tone that contradicted the word entirely. Pressed, he amended: “The hill doesn’t care who you are. You can be in the best shape of your life and Runyon will still ask you a question you don’t have the answer to.”
The women’s race went to Priya Ellery, 31, a physical therapist from Beachwood Canyon who trains on these trails most mornings and treated the course, she said, “like a rude neighbor I already know how to deal with.” She finished in 46:03, then went back down the hill to cheer in the runners still climbing, which is its own canyon tradition.
The event is as much civic ritual as competition. The Runyon 10K has always drawn a mix of serious club runners chasing a time and neighborhood people who signed up on a dare and spend the back half of the course walking, laughing, and swearing gently at the switchbacks. Organizers kept the field capped and the footprint light, mindful that the canyon is a working park that thousands of people use every day, not a stadium that empties when the event ends.
“We’re guests up here, same as everyone,” said race director Janine Ruel, who spent the morning at the finish handing out water and reuniting runners with dogs they had entrusted to the volunteers. “The hill was here before us and it’ll be here after. All we do is put out cones and let people find out how they measure up to it.”
By nine the cones were coming down, the last finishers were in, and the canyon was reverting to its ordinary Sunday self — hikers streaming up the same fire road the runners had just conquered, most of them unaware a race had happened at all. Errico, medal in his pocket, was among them, walking down easy, letting the hill have the last word it always has.