Masters Women's Marathon: Ramona Sanchez Runs Away With It

• Sanchez wins in 2:50:36 (6:30/mi), a commanding 29:38 gap over 2nd-place Carrie Dixon (3:20:14, 7:38/mi).
• Dixon and Gomez separated by 48 seconds — Dixon 2nd in 3:20:14, Paola Gomez 3rd in 3:21:02 — after Gomez held a higher women's field position through much of the race.
• Places 4–6 finished within 39 seconds of each other: Jing Ge-Stadnyk (3:35:00), Katie Burns (3:35:33), and Lara Salamacha (3:35:39).
• Karen Carnahan, age 62, finished 10th in 3:42:12 — the oldest athlete among the listed Masters Women finishers.

Ramona Sanchez of Sparks, NV, put on a masterclass in 74°F heat, running 6:30/mi to win the Masters Women's race in 2:50:36 — nearly 30 minutes ahead of anyone else in the field. She didn't start at the front: at the first checkpoint she sat 9th among all women, but by the 10-kilometer mark she had surged to 2nd and never looked back. She sealed it with the fastest women's split of the entire race on the final stretch from 25.2 miles to the finish — a flourish that made an already dominant performance feel emphatic.

Behind her, the battle for 2nd and 3rd was genuinely tense. Paola Gomez of Bogotá ran a strong early race — sitting 3rd among all women at the first checkpoint — but gradually drifted back through the field. Carrie Dixon, meanwhile, was doing the opposite: starting 20th among women, she climbed steadily through the pack, posting the 6th-fastest women's split on the opening mile-to-10K stretch. By the finish, Dixon had the edge, crossing in 3:20:14 to Gomez's 3:21:02. Dixon earned it by catching up; Gomez, who had posted the 8th-fastest women's split from mile 23 to 25.2, couldn't quite hold her position in the final miles.

The race for 4th through 6th was one of the tightest battles of the day. Jing Ge-Stadnyk ran one of the most impressive trajectories in the field — starting 47th among women and climbing all the way to 13th by the finish — to cross in 3:35:00. Katie Burns (3:35:33) and Lara Salamacha (3:35:39), at age 56, were right on her heels, the three of them separated by just 39 seconds across 26.2 miles. Salamacha's performance deserves a special mention: at 56, she ran 8:14/mi to finish 6th in a field of 89.