F45-49: Kiplagat Untouchable in the Boston Heat

• Edna Kiplagat won F45-49 in 32:29 (5:14/mi), nearly nine minutes clear of 2nd place — the most dominant margin on the leaderboard.
• Sally Dupere (41:22) edged Amanda Watters (41:45) by 23 seconds for the silver spot, with both women running nearly identical middle segments.
• Karen Kaplan and Heidi Cook finished 7th and 8th in 45:51 and 45:52 respectively — one second apart after 6.2 miles in 93°F heat.
• 277 women finished in F45-49, making it one of the deepest age groups in the race.

Edna Kiplagat simply ran a different race than everyone else in F45-49 on Sunday. At 5:14 per mile through Boston's sweltering streets — 93 degrees, a stiff 15 mph wind — she crossed in 32:29, a margin of nearly nine minutes over the rest of the age group. She held 9th among all women through the first two checkpoints, then moved to 8th with a 7th-fastest women's split on the 8K-to-finish stretch. That closing kick, in that heat, tells you everything.

Behind Kiplagat, the real race was for 2nd. Sally Dupere of Newton and Amanda Watters of Northfield, VT ran nearly in lockstep through the middle 3K-to-8K segment — 46th and 47th fastest among women on that stretch — before Dupere pulled clear to finish in 41:22 to Watters' 41:45. Twenty-three seconds after more than six miles of racing in brutal conditions.

The 4th-through-6th spots were their own tight contest. Joy Burke (44:10), Amanda Reich (44:20), and Diona Fulton (44:29) were separated by just 19 seconds, with Burke and Reich tracking each other closely through the women's field — Burke moved from 98th to 91st among women by the 8K mark before settling 94th at the finish, while Reich shadowed her nearly step for step.

Further back, the battle for 7th and 8th was decided by the clock's finest margin: Karen Kaplan of Newton finished in 45:51, Heidi Cook of Cambridge in 45:52 — one second between them after 6.2 miles on a day when just finishing in the heat was its own achievement.