Whitehorse's Karl Blattmann is keeping himself busy this summer.

Blattmann won the Yukon River Trail Half Marathon on Sunday with a time of one hour, 24 minutes, 16 seconds over 21.1 kilometres.

Not bad considering he entered the Long Lake Triathlon on Saturday. Granted, he scratched in that event after a wrong turn on the 15.5-km mountain bike portion. But you've got to admire his verve.

Thirty-two seconds separated second and fourth in the River Trail Marathon.

Calgary's Shawn Dowling took second in 1:32:06 and Vancouver's Nathan Stafford placed third in 1:32:19.

Whitehorse's Tom Ullyett was the next Yukoner with a fourth-place finish in a time of 1:32:38.

Blattmann shaved 35 seconds off his last year's time of 1:24:51, which earned him a second-place finish in 2010 behind fellow Yukoner Rodney Hulstein.

"I'm pretty tired,” Blattmann laughed on Sunday. "It's hard. I ran my normal pace, but the hills start to add up. Anyway you go, you got to push it right to the end, so frankly, I'm always pretty tired and pretty sore at the end of a race.

No matter how well it goes, it's always going to be painful, because if you feel really good, you could probably go a little bit faster. I always just keep pushing it until it doesn't feel good, and then it stops.”

Blattmann knows the feeling.

He and fellow Yukoners Kerrie Paterson, Nadele Flynn, Brian MacDonald and Lawrence Igance competed in the Desert Half Iron in Osoyoos, B.C., in July.

Blattmann wound up as the top Yukoner with a 10th place finish in the event, which included a 1.9-km swim, 90-km bike ride and 21.1 km run.

The River Trail Marathon is the last big race of the season for Blattmann.

"This is more of a fun event; and frankly, coming off of Osoyoos, I haven't done a lot of training because I'm pretty tired, more mentally than anything,” he said.

The trail marathon included the following categories: Full Marathon, Half Marathon, Half Marathon walkers and a relay.

The event was sold out for the third year in a row, attracting some 300 competitors, the majority of which came from Canada, but also included Americans, Germans and Spaniards.

The growing popularity of the marathon attracted runners like Stafford, who arrived at the finish line with dirt caked to his knee and shoulder after tripping over a root near the 14-km mark.

Stafford had a personal reason for making the trek up and then round the route.

His father, Don, passed away last year at 69 years old with cancer.

"One of his goals was to come up and see some big horn sheep up in the Yukon before he passed,” Stafford said. "He never got to do it, but that was my goal, was to come up here this summer, see some sheep. And then I started looking around and there was a trail race up here at the same time, so I figured I'd come up and do that.”

Stafford used the trail marathon to cap his running season, which included completing the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:57 in April.

Ullyett said the trail marathon is improving in all respects.

"It's gotten a bit of a cache. Every year there's people like Nathan that come to run either the marathon or the half, just because of the novelty, because Canadian Running magazine rated it as one of the top 10 trail marathons in Canada. Who doesn't want to come to Canada's top left-hand corner and run a trail race?”