F1-19 at CIM 2025: Sydney Topping Runs Away With It

• Sydney Topping, 18, wins in 2:56:11 — a 6:43/mi average that put her 40 minutes and 17 seconds clear of the rest of the F1-19 field.
• Kaylin Dunphy, 15, finishes 2nd at 3:36:28 — the youngest on the podium, running 8:15/mi to hold off Lucy Schofield by more than 12 minutes.
• Paloma Aguilera fades; Ali Fahlen and Natalie Samulka hold firm — Aguilera dropped from a strong early position to 4th (3:52:01), while Fahlen (3:53:37, 5th) and Samulka (3:54:04, 6th) finished within 27 seconds of each other.
• 17 finishers ranging from age 15 to 19 crossed the line, with times spanning nearly three hours from first to last.

Sydney Topping made this race her own from the start. The 18-year-old from Carmichael ran a 6:43/mi average — a pace that would be respectable in any women's field — and her 40-minute winning margin speaks for itself. Her movement through the women's standings tells the story of a controlled, disciplined run: she sat around 172nd among women early, drifted slightly to 211th at mid-race, then reeled it back in to 198th by the finish, posting the 115th-fastest women's split on the 40K-to-finish stretch. That closing kick among the full women's field underlines just how strong she was running late.

Behind Topping, the podium battle was decided well before the finish line. Kaylin Dunphy, just 15 years old and from Danville, ran a composed 3:36:28 to claim 2nd — steadily climbing the women's standings from 1,176th at the first checkpoint all the way to 981st by the end, a sign she was passing runners throughout. Lucy Schofield of Winnetka, IL finished 3rd in 3:49:02, also moving forward consistently across the race. Both earned their podium spots by running the second half well.

The middle of the field told a different story. Paloma Aguilera, 18, started briskly — sitting 772nd among women at the 5K mark — but faded steadily, posting the 961st-fastest women's split in the 5K-to-10K segment and sliding all the way to 4th by the finish in 3:52:01. Fahlen (3:53:37) and Samulka (3:54:04) closed out the top six within a tight 27-second window, with Georgia Allen (4:02:26, 7th) and Aubrey Pierce (4:04:23, 8th) not far behind.

At the back of the F1-19 field, a cluster of teenagers — including 16-year-olds Jessica Seo (5:27:02, 13th) and Tanuja Balasa (5:29:27, 14th) — finished within 25 seconds of each other, and Mary Kalchenko, 16, of Rio Linda closed out the group in 17th at 5:52:17. Running 26.2 miles at any pace as a teenager is no small thing, and all 17 finishers made it to Sacramento's finish line.