F30-34: Tiyouri Dominates Chicago's Fastest Age Group

• Maor Tiyouri won the F30-34 group in 1:13:59 (5:39/mi), finishing 3rd among all women in the race.
• Britney Romero ran 1:18:57 to take 2nd, nearly 5 minutes back — a clear margin at the front.
• Brittany Matteson was the race's biggest mover in the group, surging from 44th among women at the first checkpoint all the way to 23rd by the finish.
• The 5th-through-6th battle was the tightest of the day: Matteson (1:27:38) and Megan Janezic (1:27:41) were separated by just 3 seconds across 13.1 miles.

Maor Tiyouri, the Boulder runner, put the F30-34 race away early and never let go. She held 3rd among all women from the opening kilometers, dipped briefly to 4th between 15K and the finish stretch, then reclaimed 3rd to cross in 1:13:59. Her sharpest weapon was the 10K-to-15K segment, where she posted the 2nd-fastest women's split on that stretch — a surge that made her lead look even more authoritative. At 5:39 per mile over 13.1 miles on a warm, breezy Chicago morning, this was a commanding performance.

Behind her, Britney Romero (1:18:57) was quietly consistent, sitting 8th among women at every checkpoint before moving up to 6th by the finish. Her 10K-to-15K split ranked 6th among all women — the same stretch where Tiyouri turned the screws — and she held off Maeve McCartin (1:20:47, 3rd in F30-34) and Vanessa Righeimer (1:21:27, 4th) to secure the runner-up spot. McCartin's 8th-fastest women's split on the 15K-to-finish leg showed she was building steam late, and Righeimer's 10th-fastest women's 8K-to-10K split confirmed a strong mid-race push — but neither could close the gap.

The most compelling subplot belonged to Brittany Matteson. Starting deep in the women's field — 44th at the first checkpoint — she picked off runners relentlessly through the second half, posting the 14th-fastest women's split from 15K to the finish and arriving 5th in F30-34 at 1:27:38. She edged Libertyville's Megan Janezic (6th, 1:27:41) by just three seconds, a margin that makes that late-race charge all the more satisfying. In a field of 346 finishers, those two told the best closing story of the day.