Crowley said she pulled away early on in the women's race and tried to keep up with some of the male runners, wining the women's race in the end by more than three minutes.
"There was a good group of Lake City guys I tried to stay with for a while," she said.
Crowley said she would now focus on the up-coming Rotorua Marathon, with plenty of hard training to be done in the coming months.
"Everyone will be doing it pretty hard from now on," she said. "I'd like to run well under three hours [at the marathon]."
In the men's race yesterday, Aucklander Nick Johnston crossed the line first ahead of Rotorua triathlete Matt Parsonage.
Johnston ran away to a good lead in the first half of the run and never let the advantage go, winning in a time of 1hr 17min 10sec, 30 seconds ahead of Parsonage.
Parsonage said it was a good day out yesterday and he was pleased to podium at the event.
"It would have been nice to win but I'm pretty happy, I was not too far behind the winner," he said.
"He jumped out to a lead pretty early on and extended the lead through the first half [of the run], then I cut back a little bit in the second half."
Parsonage has had a good season, winning the Rotorua Half Ironman in December and a third in the New Plymouth Half Ironman in February.
Parsonage is in the middle of training for the Auckland Half Ironman being held at the end of the month.
Organisers of the Copthorne Rotorua Off-Road Half Marathon said this year they had the highest number of participants they have had in years.
Other notable Rotorua finishers at the off-road half marathon yesterday included Tony Broadhead and Graeme Pearson, who finished fourth and fifth respectively.
