F20-24: Susannah Bennett Runs Away from a Loaded Young Field

• Susannah Bennett won the F20-24 age group in 1:26:48 (6:37/mi), finishing 13th among all women — a commanding margin of nearly two minutes over runner-up Alexandra Lazar.
• Alexandra Lazar closed the hardest of anyone on the podium, posting the 16th-fastest women's split on the 15K-to-finish stretch to lock up second in 1:28:45.
• Hannah Nelson ran the 11th-fastest women's first-half split in the entire women's field, but faded from 10th to 22nd among women in the back half, slipping to 3rd in the age group (1:29:33).
• A 7-minute gap separates the top five from 6th place, where Emily Hayes (1:40:46) leads a tightly bunched mid-pack.

Susannah Bennett, just 20 years old and representing Grand Rapids, MI, was the class of the F20-24 field from start to finish. She entered the race already sitting 17th among all women and never wavered, methodically climbing to 13th by the finish at a crisp 6:37/mi average. The decisive stretch came between 10K and 15K, where she posted the 13th-fastest women's split across the entire women's field — a surge that separated her from the chasing pack and made the final miles a formality.

The real drama behind her was a tale of two very different races. Hannah Nelson looked like a genuine podium threat early, posting one of the sharpest first-half splits in the entire women's race — 11th-fastest — and sitting 10th among women at the halfway point. But the back half told a different story: she faded to 22nd among women and was ultimately overtaken by Lazar, who ran the opposite race. Lazar was patient through the middle miles, then uncorked the 16th-fastest women's split from 15K to the finish to surge from 22nd to 19th among women and claim a well-earned second place in 1:28:45.

Faith Faller (1:31:53) and Paula Gutierrez (1:33:30) rounded out the top five with steady, consistent efforts — Faller's first-half split ranked 27th among women, and Gutierrez was particularly strong through the 5K-to-8K segment. Beyond them, a notable gap opens before Emily Hayes leads a dense cluster of 321 more finishers who made this one of the largest age groups on the course.