Broken Arrow 46K: Vanzandt rules the F40-49 field

• Marie Vanzandt, 5:59:25 (12:34/mi) — the only F40-49 finisher under six hours, and she kept climbing the women's field all day: from 34th among women at the first checkpoint to 18th by the finish.
• Amber Weibel's double: runner-up here in 6:02:53, Weibel had already won the Iron Face Challenge outright — racing and placing across two events in one weekend is the standout story of this field.
• Sarah Malone (12th, 7:11:28) also carried IFC hardware into this race, finishing 2nd among women there before backing it up on the 46K — a remarkable double for the Madison-to-Tahoe traveler.
• Brittany Rezowalli (5th, 6:50:59) posted the 3rd-fastest women's split on the Village→Olympic Valley East 2 segment — the sharpest single-segment performance in the F40-49 field.

Marie Vanzandt, 41, from Escondido, crossed in 5:59:25 — sub-six hours on a course that climbs through thin air between 6,200 and nearly 9,000 feet. She was the only finisher in this field to break that barrier, and her race unfolded with steady, relentless efficiency: starting 34th among women, she moved to 26th, then 24th, 21st, 19th, and finally 18th, never surrendering a position in the women's field. Her 14th-fastest women's split on the Siberia 2→High Camp 2 segment showed she was still pressing hard late in the race.

Amber Weibel, 48, from South Lake Tahoe, made it a genuine contest, finishing 3:28 back in 6:02:53 (12:42/mi) — a strong gap, but Weibel's story runs deeper than this result. She had already won the women's Iron Face Challenge before toeing this start line, making her silver-medal finish here part of a remarkable two-race weekend. She, too, climbed steadily through the women's field, and her 17th-fastest split on Olympic Valley East 2→Snow King 2 matched Rebecca Anderson's on that same segment — though Anderson (3rd, 6:13:47) ran it at the same ranking while finishing 11 minutes further back overall, evidence that Anderson made up ground there after a slower start.

Behind the podium, the racing was tight through the middle of the field. Marny Scalard (4th, 6:44:00) and Rezowalli (5th, 6:50:59) were separated by nearly seven minutes, but Rezowalli's blazing Village→Olympic Valley East 2 split — 3rd-fastest among all women on that stretch — shows she had a gear the rest of the field couldn't match on that segment, even if the overall clock told a different story. Megan Kono (6th, 6:52:46) and Carling Ursem (7th, 6:52:59) were separated by just 13 seconds at the line, a genuine battle to the finish. Forty-seven women completed this course in conditions that were cool and clear but never forgiving — every one of them navigating miles of high-elevation terrain that this field clearly came prepared to handle.