Shamrock'n Half Marathon F70-74: Janet Price Runs Away With It

• Janet Price, 74, wins in 2:18:54 (10:36/mi), finishing nearly 10 minutes clear of runner-up Bella Almaraz (2:28:57).
• Ginny Saiz-Burg rounds out the podium in 2:38:42, nearly 10 minutes behind Almaraz — a three-way spread of 20 minutes across the top three.
• Price's late surge: she posted the 663rd-fastest women's split on the Mile 11-to-finish stretch, climbing from 791st to close the race strongly among the women's field.
• Saiz-Burg faded across the back half: she moved from 1,022nd to 1,283rd among women across the race — the most pronounced fade of any F70-74 finisher.

At 74, Janet Price was the oldest athlete in the F70-74 group and delivered the sharpest performance in it, crossing in 2:18:54 at a 10:36/mi clip. Her race was far from static — she tracked between 910th and 926th among women early on, then steadily reeled in the field through the second half, landing at 791st among women by the finish. That closing Mile 11-to-finish split, 663rd-fastest among women, showed she was still accelerating when others were managing the miles.

Bella Almaraz of Sacramento ran a composed race at 11:22/mi, finishing 2:28:57 for a clear second place. Her position among the women's field actually improved over the course of the race — dropping from 1,176th early to 1,077th by the finish — a quiet, consistent effort that held off Reno's Ginny Saiz-Burg, who came in third at 2:38:42. Saiz-Burg told a different story: her best relative split came on the Mile 2.04-to-5.13 segment, and she drifted steadily backward among the women's field from there, finishing 261 spots lower in the women's standings than where she'd stood early on.

The back half of the F70-74 field stretched from Annette Elder's 3:01:48 in fourth through Susan Levine's 3:34:06 in 10th — a span of 32 minutes across seven finishers. Patty Vander Dussen (5th, 3:09:49) was one of the few in that group to actually gain ground among women late, posting the 1,606th-fastest Mile 11-to-finish split. On a clear, cool Sacramento morning — 55°F with a 10 mph breeze — all ten women in the F70-74 group got it done.