ROCKLAND – Donna Hurley cleans houses for a living.

She cleaned up a road race field on Saturday.

The Northport, N.Y., native who lives in Spruce Head easily won the women’s division and finished sixth overall among 53 runners in the Rockland 25K Championship Run by clocking a time of 1 hour, 45 minutes, 58 seconds over the hilly, sun-splashed course.

Eastport native Robert Ashby, a welder at Bath Iron Works who lives in Brunswick, was the overall winner as he cruised home in 1:30.16.

Matt Archambeau, who lives in Bangor but was raised in Duluth, Minn., was second in 1:32.59 and Charles Jepson Jr. of South Berwick was third in 1:34.46.

Rounding out the top five were Michael Boucher of Freeport at 1:43.02 and Paul Fagan of Camden at 1:43.37.

The second-, third- and fourth-place finishers in the women’s division were separated by just 27 seconds. Kennebunk’s Nancy Kneeland (1:57.51) was second; Carol Manley of nearby Washington was third in 1:58.12 and Greene’s Vicki Bryant was fourth in 1:58.18.

Kneeland, Manley and Bryant were 19th, 20th and 21st overall.

“I was happy with my run,” said the 39-year-old Hurley, who defended her Rockland title and had a victory margin of 11:53.

“I was all by myself, there weren’t any men or women near me, and that made it very hard for me to keep my pace up,” she added.

To conquer the loneliness, Hurley said, “I told myself I am a fit, strong, powerful woman. I can do this.”

“Donna is very talented and she works very hard at it,” said Kneeland, a dental assistant and a 1977 University of Maine graduate who was making her debut in the 15th annual event, which began in Union.

“It was a tough course. The hills were tough and we had a headwind the last three or four miles,” Kneeland said. “I just wanted to break two hours so I was very pleased with my run.”

The 42-year-old Kneeland used it as a training run and said it’s “a lot easier to run 15 miles with a lot of other people.”

Manley, a Warren native and former winner of the event who has run it several times, said the sun and 50-degree temperature made it “one of the nicest days we’ve had for it.”

The cook and kitchen manager of the Brown Bag Restaurant in Rockland said she felt “pretty good” during the race but her time wasn’t one of her fastest.

The 28-year-old Ashby, a 1987 graduate of Eastport’s Shead High School, ran in a small pack with Archambeau and Jepson for the first four miles but began gradually pulling away “after the five or six-mile mark.

“I didn’t want it to come down to a kick at the end,” said Ashby. “I was hoping to do it in 1:30 [or less]. But I’ll take it [1:30.16]. Considering the headwind, I was real happy with it.”

The 24-year-old Archambeau, like several of the other runners, said he used it as preparation for the Boston Marathon.

“It’s got a good long distance and it’s two weeks before the Boston Marathon so you can put in a long, hard run but you still have time to recover,” explained Archambeau, who is an engineer at Champion International Corp. in Bucksport.

Archambeau, who was the runner-up in Rockland to Andy Spau

Archambeau, who was the runner-up in Rockland to Andy Spaulding a year ago, said, “I was trying to keep a six-minute mile pace and hoping to run under 1:33.”

Which he did by one second.

Jepson was not pleased with his run.

“I’ve done faster training runs,” said the 37-year-old Jepson, who is the pastor of the South Berwick-Wells Christian Church and an English teacher at Seacoast Christian in South Berwick. “Some days you have it, some days you don’t. I had a lot of pain in my quads.”

Seventy-five year-old Carlton Mendell of Portland and his friend, 70-year-old Julius Marzul of Gorham, both finished the race while tuning up for upcoming marathons. Mendell will run the Boston Marathon for the 20th consecutive year while Marzul will run in next Sunday’s London Marathon.

“I last ran the London Marathon 15 years ago,” said Marzul, who began running to help his asthma while working as a civil servant at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone 22 years ago.