Rocket City Half Marathon — F60-64: Lamb Leads Wire to Wire

• Margaret Lamb (La Fayette, GA) won the F60-64 age group in 2:15:39 (10:21/mi), more than four minutes clear of the field.
• Wanda Shoemake claimed 2nd with the strongest closing split in the group — the 118th-fastest women's split on the 8M→Finish stretch, surging from outside the top 230 among women to 169th.
• Yvonne Brabham held 3rd in 2:21:09, though she faded slightly over the back half, slipping from 173rd to 185th among women in that final segment.
• Fourteen women finished in F60-64, spread across a 1:12:52 window from first to last.

Margaret Lamb ran a composed, controlled race from start to finish. Averaging 10:21 per mile across the full 13.1, she moved steadily through the women's field over the second half — climbing from 151st to 144th among women on the 8M→Finish leg — and never looked threatened. Her winning margin of 4:20 over Shoemake was decisive enough that the real contest for the podium played out well behind her.

That contest was genuinely interesting. Wanda Shoemake (Petal, MS) was the group's most explosive closer, posting the 118th-fastest women's split on the back half of the course and vaulting 63 places among women from the 8-mile mark to the finish. She crossed in 2:19:59 to lock up 2nd. Yvonne Brabham (San Antonio, TX) had actually been running ahead of Shoemake through the early miles — sitting 173rd among women at 8M — but gave back a little ground late, finishing 3rd in 2:21:09 as Shoemake swept past. The gap between them was 1:10.

Charla Green (Lawrenceville, GA) rounded out the top four in 2:23:28, while local runner Melinda Still represented Huntsville well in 5th at 2:32:49. Three more Huntsville-area women — Linda Vanrell, Irene Fischer, and Deborah Gulley — filled out the middle of the field, giving the hometown crowd plenty to cheer on a mild December morning. Carole Edmonds (Pisgah, AL) brought it home in 3:28:31 to complete all 14 finishers.