FOR 1ST, LAST, MARATHON TRYING TIME.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Chuck Teixeira and Tina Hennings were the bookends of the third annual Santa Clarita Marathon, he sprinting across the finish line first and she limping most of the route alone and coming in last.

The Canyon Country man and the Huntington Beach woman were among 595 runners who covered the 26.2-mile route, start to finish, Sunday during a mild November day.

Competing in his third Santa Clarita Marathon, Teixeira, 38, averaged six-minute miles during the race, which he finished in 2 hours, 36 minutes and 6 seconds. It took Hennings, a 61-year-old junior high teacher, four times as long to complete the race because of pain in her right leg.

Hennings, accustomed to training on the flat streets of Huntington Beach, didn't do well on the Santa Clarita terrain. ``I hit the wall at about the seventh mile,'' she said. ``I just limped and walked for 19 miles. My poor left leg did all the work.''

A newcomer to distance running, Hennings ran her first marathon in Los Angeles last March and finished in 8 hours, 7 minutes. But in that race, she completed nearly three-fourths of the route before she ran into difficulty.

For Teixeira, victory was bittersweet. Four miles before the finish line, as he ran in second place, Teixeira collided with a Brownie from a Girl Scout troop passing out water at mile marker 22.

``I guess they hadn't gotten in their routine of handing out the water,'' he said, explaining that timing is essential between volunteers and the runners coming past them.

``I had a run-in with a little girl who was handing out water,'' Teixeira said. ``I hit her running full speed.''

As he fell, Teixeira scraped up his hands and bumped his head. The little girl was hurt as well, but race organizers said her injuries weren't serious.

``She was on the ground screaming. I stopped for a moment - I wanted to see how she was,'' Teixeira said. ``The race just flashed before my eyes.''

He said he saw a flurry of bystanders rush to the girl's aid. ``I saw she was in good hands, so I decided to press on,'' Teixeira said. ``I felt terrible. My hands were stinging, my mind was reeling. I didn't know if it was the right thing to do to press on - it was extremely traumatic.''

After the race, Teixeira said he alerted the marathon organizers about the accident. In the 20 marathons he has run - including the Los Angeles race eight times - nothing like that has ever happened, he said.

Teixeira hoped to find out the girl's name so he can tell her he's sorry.

``I'd just like to send out my heartfelt apologies for such an unfortunate incident,'' he said. ``I appreciate all the help that all the volunteers provide, and to hurt one is just devastating to me. The race couldn't happen without them.''

Hennings, meanwhile, said running ``is the greatest antidote to aging.''

She went to work Monday, and her principal announced her feat of 10 hours, 13 minutes and 56 seconds to students and faculty at Sycamore Junior High School in Anaheim.

During most of her race, the water tables were abandoned by the time Hennings trudged past, the portable restrooms along the route had been packed up long before she arrived, and even the orange cones separating marathoners from traffic had been taken away.

But the 4-foot-11-inch runner continued, despite the urging of her husband to quit. Several times, she was on the verge of getting lost on the deserted route, Hennings recalled.

``I didn't care about being last. That didn't matter to me at all,'' she said. ``All that matters to me is that I finished.''

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Photo: (Color) Runner Chuck Teixeira of Canyon Country averaged 6-minute miles Sunday.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News