Masters Women 5K: Mary Christopher Runs Away With It

• Mary Christopher won the Masters Women race in 23:04 (7:25/mi) — more than 1:13 ahead of runner-up Jodi Broz.
• Jodi Broz, 57, finished 2nd in 24:17 — the top finisher among the older half of the field, outrunning competitors more than a decade her junior.
• A four-way photo finish for 5th–8th: Gonzalez, Smith, Taylor, and Pellascini all clocked 25:49–25:51, separated by just two seconds across four athletes.
• Beverly Richert, 66, and Denise Aslanian, 65, both cracked the top 20 in a Masters Women field of 278.

Mary Christopher made this race her own from the gun. The 40-year-old from Healdsburg crossed in 23:04 at a 7:25/mi clip — a pace that no one in the Masters Women field came close to matching. Her margin of victory over Jodi Broz was 1:13, and over third-place Zhanna Imach (24:56, 8:02/mi) it stretched to nearly two minutes. In a misty Santa Rosa morning with humidity pushing 91%, that kind of sustained pace was a commanding statement.

Broz deserves her own spotlight. At 57, she ran 24:17 at 7:49/mi to claim a clear second place — finishing well ahead of Imach and a group of women 10 to 15 years younger. Her 7:49/mi pace held up against a competitive top five, and her age made it one of the more impressive individual efforts of the morning.

The race for 5th through 8th was something else entirely. Teresa Gonzalez (25:49), Rosalie Smith (25:50), Nicole Taylor (25:50), and Yaneyra Pellascini (25:51) finished within two seconds of each other, all averaging 8:19/mi. Lotta Aalto (25:54) and Riya Young (26:03) weren't far behind, making the mid-pack a genuinely tight contest over those final meters.

Further down the leaderboard, Beverly Richert (27:40) and Denise Aslanian (28:11) — ages 66 and 65, respectively — both finished in the top 20 of a 278-finisher field. In a Masters Women race that already skews toward competitive athletes, that's worth noting.