Napa Valley Half Marathon F55-59: Van Duyne runs clear in the cold

• Jenny Van Duyne won the F55-59 race in 1:44:41 (7:59/mi), finishing more than 90 seconds clear of the field.
• Angie Hart posted the 109th-fastest women's split on the 6.9M–Finish segment — the strongest closing leg among the top five — charging from 145th to 121st among women to claim 3rd in 1:46:15.
• 2nd and 3rd were separated by just two seconds: Glynis Gozigian's 1:46:13 edged Hart's 1:46:15, though Hart was the one doing the catching with a faster closing split.
• The top 20 in this field of 84 spanned from 1:44:41 to 2:01:47 — a competitive, tightly clustered pack across the middle of the leaderboard.

In 37°F morning air with a stiff 87% humidity hanging over Napa Valley, the F55-59 field of 84 got after it from the gun. Jenny Van Duyne, 56, from Reno, was the class of the group — her 7:59/mi average produced a 1:44:41 that no one came close to matching. She moved steadily through the women's field in the second half, and while her 6.9M–Finish split ranked 119th among women, the race was already decided long before the finish line.

The real drama played out in the battle for 2nd and 3rd. Glynis Gozigian of Boston held on for 2nd in 1:46:13 at 8:06/mi, but Angie Hart of Davis was coming hard. Hart had sat 145th among women at the 6.9-mile mark, but her 109th-fastest women's closing split — the sharpest of the top five — rocketed her up to 121st among women by the finish. She crossed in 1:46:15, just two seconds behind Gozigian. Hart ran the faster second half; Gozigian held just enough.

Tammy Liu of Ellicott City rounded out the top four in 1:46:37, and Marty Mooney-Conkle of Loomis — the only top-five finisher to lose ground among women in the closing stretch — came home 5th in 1:47:13. Cynthia Bosco (1:48:06), Elizabeth Levin (1:49:10), and Stephanie Bouquet (1:49:26) filled out a compact top eight, all within five minutes of the winner. Further back, Joy Erf (10th, 1:52:17) and Michele Hugin (11th, 1:53:52) led a strong mid-pack contingent that stretched all the way to Li Zhou's 20th-place 2:01:47 — eighty-four women, racing hard in the Napa cold.