Luis Orta repeats as men’s winner in the Tropical 5K

Instead of his normal training run in preparation for the upcoming World Cross Country Championships, Luis Orta entered and easily won his second consecutive Life Time Tropical 5K in Miami Saturday morning.

Orta, 33, is a former University of Kentucky distance runner (20092013) and 2016 Venezuelan Olympic marathoner who is in town for the race weekend with runners from his “My Olympic Coach” company. He coaches nearly 50 of them who will participate in Sunday’s Life Time Miami Marathon and Half through Downtown Miami, Miami Beach and Coconut Grove.

Saturday’s race was the warm-up event and Orta made it easy pickings in a time of 15:25, 59 seconds faster than runner-up Roger Reyes of Hialeah.

“[The race] was easy. It was not complicated, just straightforward,” Orta said. “It was a little bit windy, but all good.”

The first woman to cross the finish line on the 72-degree blustery morning was duathlon dynamo Monica Doval (20:45) of Fort Lauderdale. The 44-year-old Peru native, who became an American citizen in 2019, entered the Tropical 5K as a training run — for Sunday’s half-marathon and ultimately her upcoming

World Duathlon Championships in April.

“It was so nice. I had no idea I would win,” said the married mother of a 5-year-old son. “The race was smooth, but windy as hell. I kept saying, ‘Don’t push me around so hard.’ ”

Andrea Suarez of Puerto Rico (21:30) was second.

The early morning point-to-point race from Watson Island to the southern tip of South Beach was also a conquest for Miami Jiu Jitsu fighter Benjamin Kunzle, a 24year-old who became a quadriplegic last year when he suffered a freak training accident. Kunzle was able to make it to the finish line of his first race on a hand-cycle in 32:51 despite a struggle with the steep MacArthur Causeway bridge. He finished second in the category.

The course included 3.1 miles of water-lined views, including the scenic MacArthur with its backdrop of gleaming cruise ships docked at the Port of Miami. The field of 3,000 runners made their way through Miami Beach before heading to the finish line in front of South Beach’s famed Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant.

Orta hosted his company’s booth at the weekend Expo in addition to running Saturday. In two weeks, he will be in Australia for the Cross Country World Championships.