Rocket City 10K — F25-29: Mami Torches the Field on a Frigid Morning

• Leahrose Mami wins in 38:52 (6:15/mi), nearly four minutes clear of 2nd place — a dominant wire-to-wire performance in a 49-woman field.
• The gap from 1st to 2nd is 3:54; from 2nd to 3rd is another 3:47 — the top three are in a league of their own, separated from 4th place (48:20) by over nine minutes combined.
• Places 9, 10, and 11 — Amiracal Phillips (57:58), Kelsey Cleveland (57:57), and McLain Pabalate (57:59) — finished within two seconds of each other, a genuine three-way battle at 9:20/mi.
• Mami doubled up on race weekend, having also placed 4th among women in the 5K — making her one of the busiest and most impressive competitors at the Rocket City event.

Twenty-nine degrees, a 16 mph wind, and clear skies greeted 49 women in the F25-29 age group at the Rocket City 10K — and Leahrose Mami of Northport, AL treated the conditions like a non-issue. Her 38:52 finish at a 6:15/mi clip was in a class by itself, and the story of her race weekend is worth its own headline: she'd already raced the 5K, finishing 4th among women there, and then came back to own her age group in the 10K. That kind of back-to-back performance across two races in one event deserves real recognition.

Marja Lopez Tello of Harvest, AL was a clear and solid second in 42:46 (6:53/mi), running nearly 40 seconds per mile slower than Mami but well ahead of the rest of the field. Maria Coffman of Colorado Springs, CO rounded out the podium in 46:33 (7:29/mi), with Rebecca Mulholland of Huntsville finishing 4th in 48:20 (7:47/mi). The top four are cleanly separated — no drama there, just four runners at four distinct levels of pace.

The drama came mid-pack, where the race got genuinely chaotic. Cleveland (9th, 57:57), Phillips (10th, 57:58), and Pabalate (11th, 57:59) crossed within a two-second window — three runners, three ticks of the clock. Just behind them, Bradley McRoy (12th, 58:20) and Olivia Johnson (13th, 58:20) matched finish times to the second, with place deciding the order. The cluster from 9th through 13th spanned just 23 seconds across five finishers — the most compressed stretch of racing in the entire age group.