London Marathon 2026 F70-74: Compton edges Allison in a four-second thriller

• Lisa Compton wins the F70-74 age group in 4:16:07 (9:46/mi), holding off Jacqui Allison by just four seconds.
• Jacqui Allison (2nd, 4:16:11) started the race far ahead of Compton in the women's field and spent the back half chasing the clock — only for Compton to cross the line first.
• Deborah Lazaroff claims 3rd in 4:23:00 (10:02/mi), nearly seven minutes back, after fading through the middle miles before recovering late.
• Jan Baker runs a strong final segment to finish 4th in 4:25:08 (10:07/mi), posting one of the sharper 40K-to-finish splits in the group.

The F70-74 story at London 2026 comes down to four seconds across 26.2 miles — and the way it unfolded makes it even more compelling. Jacqui Allison was the early mover, running a 5K–10K split that placed her 5,577th among all women — a confident, aggressive start. Lisa Compton, by contrast, began much further back in the women's field at that same checkpoint and was still climbing through the pack at the halfway point. But Compton kept moving. Between 30K and 35K she posted the 6,592nd-fastest women's split in the field, and by the finish she had tracked Allison down entirely. Allison's 4:16:11 to Compton's 4:16:07: a catch-up that took the full length of the course to complete.

Deborah Lazaroff's race told a different story. She opened with genuine pace — her 5K–10K split ranked 6,058th among all women, putting her well inside the top tier of the F70-74 field early — but her gender position slipped steadily from 5,648th to 9,617th by 35K. She did claw some of that back in the final stretch, finishing 3rd in 4:23:00. Jan Baker (4th, 4:25:08) ran the opposite arc, quietly working through the field and saving her best for the 40K-to-finish segment. Geraldine Stapleton rounded out the top five in 4:27:52 (10:13/mi), largely consistent through the middle of the race.

Ruth Warren (6th, 4:30:07), Helen Todd (7th, 4:32:54), and Susie Williams (8th, 4:33:30) were separated by under two minutes across three places — a tight cluster in a group that stretched all the way to 115 finishers on a cool, breezy London morning. For a field of 70-to-74-year-olds covering 26.2 miles at sub-10:00-per-mile pace at the front, this was a performance that demands respect on its own terms.