F70-74: Lee Catella Leads Wire to Wire at 74

• Lee Catella, 74, wins in 1:25:02 — a 9:07/mi average that put nearly six and a half minutes of clear air between her and the rest of the F70-74 field.
• Pearl Savicki and Cheryl Cronin finish 2nd and 3rd in a razor-thin battle — 1:31:21 vs. 1:31:22, separated by a single second.
• Cheryl Cronin ran the strongest closing segment in the top five — her 10K-to-finish split ranked 1,166th among women, the best of the five podium contenders on that leg.
• 30 women completed the F70-74 race under a cool, humid Utica morning — 64°F with 82% humidity.

Lee Catella of Oneonta, NY, didn't just win the F70-74 race — she won it at age 74, the oldest in the field, and she made it look authoritative. Her 9:07/mi pace produced a 1:25:02 finish that no one came close to matching. Her gender place among the full women's field actually improved from 947th at 5K to 857th at 10K before settling at 865th — she was getting stronger while others faded, which is how you build a six-minute cushion.

The real drama unfolded one place behind her. Pearl Savicki of Clinton, NY, and Cheryl Cronin of Tully, NY, ran nearly the entire race within striking distance of each other, and Savicki held 2nd for much of it — but Cronin was closing. Cronin entered the 10K checkpoint ranked 1,775th among women and surged to 1,398th by the finish, posting the 1,166th-fastest women's split on the final leg. Savicki, meanwhile, slipped from 1,299th to 1,396th on that same stretch. The result: Savicki held on for 2nd in 1:31:21, Cronin took 3rd in 1:31:22 — one second the difference between them after 9.3 miles of racing.

Susan Luley (4th, 1:31:45) and Anne M Lytwynec (5th, 1:32:20) rounded out a tight top five, with just 59 seconds covering places 2 through 5. Victoria Pedersen (6th, 1:35:34) and Angela Rizzo (7th, 1:35:40) staged their own close finish six seconds apart. Further back, the field spread out across a wide range of finishing times, with Linda Carr of The Villages, FL, 20th in 2:10:54 among the listed finishers — and 10 more women completing the course beyond her.