enlarge Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Race founder Joan Benoit Samuelson congratulates Edward Muge, who won the men's race by six-tenths of a second.

enlarge Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Portland Head Light is draped with a 40-foot poster of race founder Joan Benoit Samuelson running in last year's race.

MORE INSIDE, ONLINE COMPLETE COVERAGE, including results for all finishers. SPECIAL SECTION, INSIDE FOR A SLIDE SHOW and race results, see the Beach to Beacon page at pressherald.com

CAPE ELIZABETH — The 11th running of the TD Banknorth Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race Saturday morning turned out to be a foggy affair, with a pair of Kenyans winning the overall titles, two new champions being crowned in the Maine division and one state icon wrapping another in a larger-than-life embrace.

In the absence of sunshine, a record field of 5,258 from 14 countries and 41 states completed the 6.2-mile course from Bowery Beach Road near Crescent Beach to Portland Head Light, specially decorated for the occasion. More than $60,000 in prize money was awarded.

Edward Muge of Kenya twice came from behind within the gates of Fort Williams Park to win the overall title in 27 minutes, 52.4 seconds, beating Ethiopia's Maregu Zewdie for the second week in a row.

Zewdie, who pulled up two blocks from the finish in last weekend's Quad-City Times Bix 7-Miler in Iowa after mistakenly thinking he had beaten Muge, could not hold off the 25-year-old Kenyan over the final 200 meters Saturday morning and finished sixth-tenths of a second behind.

Kiplimo Kimutai of Kenya, who led Zewdie and Muge into the park after pushing an erratic pace for much of the race, finished third, five seconds behind Zewdie. All three ran faster than 28 minutes.

The victory was worth $10,000 to Muge, but he wasn't the biggest winner Saturday. Fellow Kenyan Edith Masai, who started running seriously at age 32, not only won the women's race by more than seven seconds in 31:55.6 to claim $10,000 of her own, she also collected another grand for winning the masters category.

"The age is just a number," said Masai, 41. "I can run well. I can train well. I enjoy it. And I'm still strong, so thank God for that."

Masai lopped nearly two minutes off the previous masters record of 33:37.

The other record that fell in Saturday's fog was the oldest one on the books. Kristin Barry, 34, of Scarborough more than made up for a disappointing performance at the U.S. Olympic Women's Marathon Trials in April by winning the Maine women's race in 34:37.1, eclipsing by nearly 20 seconds the standard set by Julia Kirtland (34:56) in the inaugural edition of this race in 1998.

"It couldn't have gone any better," said Barry, who finished 10 seconds ahead of her friend and training partner Sheri McCarthy-Piers, 37, of Falmouth. Barry earned $1,000 for the victory and another $500 for the course record.

On the Maine men's side, 22-year-old Ben True of North Yarmouth continued a youthful trend started five years ago by Eric Giddings of South Portland and continued in recent years by Portland's Donny Drake and Ayalew Taye. A graduate of Greely High and a senior at Dartmouth College (which happens to be the alma mater of Barry), True cruised to victory in 31:08.8, well ahead of runner-up Judson Cake of Bar Harbor (31:48.2).

"That was a blast," said True, who refused the $1,000 prize money -- that went to Cake -- in order to retain his collegiate amateur eligibility. "I wasn't trying to push it too hard. The goal (Saturday) was just to run 31 (minutes)."

Of course, the goal for much of the field is simply to complete the winding seaside course. Upon passing six pairs of silver-and-green balloon pillars that bookend each mile of the race, finishing runners were greeted by the eerie sight of the iconic lighthouse draped in --squint through the mist if you must -- a 40-foot poster of race founder Joan Benoit Samuelson running in last year's Beach to Beacon.

The poster, which measures 22 feet wide, had hung on the side of Macy's department store in Boston during the April week that included the Olympic Women's Marathon Trials and Boston Marathon. After securing permission from the Coast Guard and the town, race organizers waited until Samuelson left the park Saturday morning at 6:30 -- she ran the course in reverse, to the starting line -- and unfurled the poster, holding it tight with tethers and 2,000...