W65-69: Susan Miller Wins in 1:42:57 as 153 Women Race Prospect Park to Central Park

• Susan Miller took the W65-69 title in 1:42:57 (7:51/mi), finishing more than 3:30 ahead of second place.
• Gordon Bakoulis (2nd, 1:46:29) and Candace Stanton (3rd, 1:46:44) were separated by just 15 seconds at the line — a gap built on Bakoulis running the stronger 15K–20K segment.
• Reva Krieger (4th, 1:48:14) and Marilyn Quinlan (5th, 1:48:24) were another 10 seconds apart, with Quinlan logging the stronger closing kick from 20K to the finish.
• The W65-69 field brought 153 finishers to a crisp 40°F morning — a deep, competitive age group across the full 13.1 miles from Prospect Park to Central Park.

Susan Miller made the W65-69 race look straightforward, but the numbers tell a sharper story. Running 7:51 per mile, she crossed in 1:42:57 — a margin of 3:32 over second place that was never seriously threatened. Her tracking data shows she was moving through the women's field steadily through the first 15K, picking off runners in the 1,300s by mid-race before settling into her rhythm. The win was emphatic.

Behind her, the real drama was the battle for second and third. Gordon Bakoulis of New York ran a patient race, climbing from deep in the women's field — past the 2,300s at 10K all the way up to 1,823rd by the finish — and her 15K–20K split was the strongest of her race. Candace Stanton of Kinnelon, NJ, had actually been tracking ahead of Bakoulis through much of the middle miles, but Bakoulis's stronger late surge made up time on that penultimate segment. The 15-second gap at the line (1:46:29 to 1:46:44) reflects a finish time that was close — but Bakoulis got there on the back of a faster run to 20K.

Fourth and fifth played out similarly tight. Reva Krieger (1:48:14) and Marilyn Quinlan (1:48:24) were inseparable on paper, but Quinlan ran the stronger final segment from 20K to the finish, nearly closing what had been a larger gap. Tracy Dover (6th, 1:51:02) and Tanya Roy (7th, 1:53:25) rounded out the top seven, with the field spreading out across a 17-minute window from first to 20th — Maureen Joyce (9th, 1:54:42) and Joan Clifford (10th, 1:56:08) among the 69-year-olds showing exactly what this age group can do on a cold March morning in New York.