Masters Women at Chicago 13.1: Lindberg Dominates in Elite Company

• Maria Lindberg won the Masters Women race in 1:15:33 (5:46/mi), finishing 9th among all women — a gap of more than nine minutes to 2nd place.
• Maria Luevano-Salazar and Ashley Turner ran the closest battle of the day, separated by just 20 seconds at the line (1:24:50 vs. 1:25:10), with both logging the 16th- and 17th-fastest women's splits on the 5K→8K segment.
• Evance Stalley, at 50, cracked the top six with a 1:30:19, the standout performance among the 50-and-older contingent in the field.
• The top 20 spans a 22-minute window — from Lindberg's 1:15:33 to Suzanne Rinehart's 1:37:59 — across a Masters Women field of 1,398 finishers.

On a clear, breezy Chicago morning, Maria Lindberg turned the Masters Women race into a solo statement. Running 5:46 per mile, she crossed in 1:15:33 and held 9th among all women from the opening miles straight through to the finish — no drift, no drama, just relentless forward momentum. Her closing leg (15K to finish) was the 6th-fastest women's split of that segment in the entire field, meaning she wasn't coasting home — she was still pressing.

Nine minutes back, the race for 2nd was a genuine contest. Maria Luevano-Salazar and Ashley Turner ran nearly in lockstep, both producing strong early miles — their 5K→8K splits ranked 17th and 16th among all women, respectively — and neither could shake the other. Luevano-Salazar held on for 2nd in 1:24:50, Turner took 3rd in 1:25:10. Twenty seconds after 13.1 miles is a real margin, but both athletes earned it by running down the women's field on that middle segment.

The next tier brought its own subplot. Veronica Laureano (4th, 1:29:10) and Joann Davidson (5th, 1:30:04) both faded slightly through the back half — Laureano slipping from 28th to 34th among women, Davidson from 37th to 39th — before Evance Stalley (6th, 1:30:19) closed the gap. Stalley, 50 years old and racing out of Chicago, ran 6:53 per mile to outpace a field full of athletes a decade younger, finishing just 15 seconds behind Davidson.

From Magaly Stock's 1:31:23 in 7th through Suzanne Rinehart's 1:37:59 in 20th, the mid-pack delivered a tightly bunched cluster — six minutes separating 14 finishers — in a Masters Women field that clearly came to race.