Shamrock Marathon F70-74: Odom edges Conti in a battle of 70-year-olds

• Evie Odom won the F70-74 age group in 5:09:48 (11:49/mi), finishing 5:01 ahead of Hui Conti.
• Hui Conti closed in 5:14:49 (12:00/mi), posting the 416th-fastest women's split on the final stretch from 25.2M to the finish.
• Odom steadily climbed the women's field across the race, moving from 670th among women at the first checkpoint all the way to 547th at the finish — a gain of 123 places.
• Conti ran the opposite early arc, slipping back before rallying, but never quite closed the gap Odom had built.

---

With just two finishers in the F70-74 age group on a warm, breezy Virginia Beach morning — 71°F, 17 mph winds, and 73% humidity — every second between Evie Odom and Hui Conti carried real weight. Odom, running 11:49/mi, controlled the race from the front and never relinquished her lead, crossing in 5:09:48 to claim the age group title.

What made Odom's run particularly compelling was the consistency of her forward momentum through the women's field. From 670th among women at the opening checkpoint, she ticked upward at every single split — 622nd, 613th, 582nd, 548th — finishing 547th. That kind of sustained, unbroken climb over 26.2 miles in difficult conditions speaks to a well-paced effort.

Conti, traveling from Cape Coral, FL, had a rougher middle stretch — her women's field position actually dipped from 618th to 650th early on before she began reeling runners back in, eventually settling at 567th among women at the finish. She did find her legs late: her split from 25.2 miles to the finish ranked 416th among all women, a strong final push. But the five-minute deficit to Odom was too large to overcome by then.

Both women finished a full marathon at age 70 in humid, windy conditions that tested athletes across the entire field. Odom takes the win; Conti earns a hard-fought second.