Rocket City 5K — F40-44: Felicia Stevens Runs Away With It

• Felicia Stevens won the F40-44 group in 22:25 (7:13/mi) — more than 2½ minutes clear of second place.
• Eden Howard and Perla Nunez both clocked 25:47 at 8:18/mi, yet the places differ — Howard edged Nunez by the narrowest of margins to claim 3rd.
• Cristin Waite and Kimberly Kringel posted the same time of 36:38, finishing 16th and 17th respectively in a similarly razor-thin separation.
• 39 women completed the F40-44 race on a mild December morning in Huntsville — 59°F and a light 9 mph breeze, about as good as Alabama gets in December.

Felicia Stevens, 43, out of Ashland, KY, turned this into a solo time trial from the start. Her 7:13/mi average wasn't just fast for the age group — it was in a different conversation entirely. Runner-up Jennifer McFate-Wikan of Bettendorf, IA finished in 24:53 (8:01/mi), a solid performance in her own right, but Stevens had already put 2 minutes and 28 seconds of daylight between them by the tape.

The real drama in the F40-44 group played out just behind McFate-Wikan. Eden Howard (Bryant, AR) and Perla Nunez (Madison, AL) — both 43, both running 8:18/mi, both crossing in 25:47 — were inseparable by the clock. The timing system, however, saw what the stopwatch couldn't: Howard takes 3rd, Nunez 4th. Catherine Toriello of Huntsville rounded out the top five in 26:03, just 16 seconds further back.

Further down the leaderboard, the 36:38 pairing of Cristin Waite (Mobile, AL) and Kimberly Kringel (Mobile, AL) — two women from the same city finishing in the same second — was a neat subplot of its own. With 39 finishers spread across a wide range of finishing times, the F40-44 field showed plenty of depth, even if the winner left no doubt about who owned the morning.