Two Cities Half Marathon: Susan Bonds Wins the F60-64 Age Group

• Susan Bonds took the F60-64 title in 1:57:44 (8:59/mi), the only finisher in the group to break two hours.
• Laura Gross was second in 2:00:52 — just over three minutes back — with both women surging hard through the final stretch.
• Bonds climbed from 168th to 87th among women in the back half of the race; Gross made a nearly identical move, rising from 218th to 116th.
• The field of 11 spanned nearly 1:45:00 from first to last, with a notable gap between the top five and the back half of the group.

Susan Bonds ran the kind of race that gets better as it goes. Starting the day around 168th among women, she was already moving by the 10K mark — up to 136th — and then really turned the screws on the back half, posting the 68th-fastest women's split from 10K to the finish and climbing all the way to 87th among women by the line. At 64 years old, running 8:59 per mile for a half marathon in 74°F heat, she earned that win decisively.

Laura Gross made a similar move and ran a strong race in her own right. She climbed from 218th among women at the mile mark to 116th at the finish, posting the 107th-fastest women's split on that same closing stretch. Her 2:00:52 kept her within striking distance early, but Bonds had built enough of a cushion — just over three minutes — that the result was never truly in doubt.

Kellie Marshall rounded out the podium in 2:12:00, showing her own strength in the early miles with the 210th-fastest women's split on the 1M-to-10K segment. Sue Kounechongprasert (2:21:05) and Rozine Bedoyan (2:23:28) filled out the top five, with Bedoyan continuing to climb through the women's field all the way to the finish. Behind them, Cathy Buckert and Rhonda Hamil finished just 13 seconds apart — 2:42:31 and 2:42:44 — in the tightest battle of the day in F60-64.