F70-74: Paulette Sharp Wins Going Away in Sacramento

• Paulette Sharp took the F70-74 title in 4:35:20 (10:30/mi), nearly 29 minutes clear of the field.
• Mary Croft and Barbara Rinker staged the group's closest battle: 2nd and 3rd were separated by just 14 seconds (5:04:19 vs. 5:04:33).
• All 11 women in the F70-74 group finished, ranging from Sharp's 4:35:20 to Dianne Cohn's 6:02:22 — a span of 87 minutes across the age group.

Sharp simply ran a different race from everyone else. Logging a 10:30/mi average, she crossed in 4:35:20 and was already pulling away from the women around her throughout the second half — her gender placement among all women ticked steadily forward from the mid-2800s at the 5K mark all the way to 2,362nd by the finish, a consistent, controlled climb through the field. Her 2,010th-fastest women's split on the 35K–40K segment underscored that she wasn't just surviving the late miles — she was still moving well through them.

Behind her, the real drama played out between Mary Croft (Tucson, AZ) and Barbara Rinker (Sacramento, CA), both 72, both finishing in 5:04 and change. Croft held 2nd in 5:04:19 at 11:36/mi, but Rinker was right on her heels at 5:04:33 — 14 seconds back after 26.2 miles. Notably, their trajectories through the women's field diverged sharply: Croft moved steadily forward from 3,216th at the opening split all the way to 2,884th at the finish, while Rinker — who started faster, sitting 2,764th early on — gradually drifted back through the women's field as the race wore on, finishing 2,892nd among all women. Rinker's strongest relative segment came at the very end, posting the 2,605th-fastest women's split on the 40K-to-finish stretch, suggesting she found something in the closing kilometers.

Ann Kask (Campbell River, BC) claimed 4th in 5:22:34, with Dilyn Radakovitz (Loomis, CA) 5th in 5:26:56 and Ann Elston (Cloverdale, CA) 6th in 5:28:25 — those three bunched within about six minutes. Susan Hatton, Charlyn Frazier, Marcia Morrison, Carol Elliott, and Dianne Cohn rounded out the group, 7th through 11th, with Morrison (5:59:25), Elliott (6:00:04), and Cohn (6:02:22) all finishing within three minutes of each other to close out the F70-74 field.