F65-69 Half Marathon: Scheuer surges through the field to take the title

• Deborah Scheuer won the F65-69 group in 2:07:47 (9:45/mi), the only finisher under 2:10.
• Scheuer climbed from 385th to 177th among women across the race — a gain of more than 200 places in the women's field.
• Barbara Simons ran 2:14:45 for 2nd, finishing 6:48 back but also moving strongly, rising from 402nd to 243rd among women.
• The F65-69 field spanned nearly 1:38 from first to last, with all 11 finishers completing the course on a warm 74°F morning in Fresno.

Deborah Scheuer, 66, from Gainesville, FL, delivered the dominant performance of the F65-69 group, crossing in 2:07:47 at a 9:45-per-mile clip. What made her run especially compelling was how she built into it — entering the second half of the race ranked 231st among women, she closed out the final stretch with the 145th-fastest women's split from 10K to the finish, vaulting all the way to 177th. That's a runner who got stronger as the miles accumulated.

Barbara Simons, also 66 and racing on home soil out of Clovis, CA, claimed 2nd in 2:14:35. She too moved well through the women's field — from 402nd at the opening checkpoint to 243rd by the finish — and posted the 236th-fastest women's split over that same 10K-to-finish stretch. The gap to Scheuer was 6:48, a margin that reflects two genuinely strong efforts rather than a runaway race at the top.

Isabel Schlotterback, another Fresno local, rounded out the podium in 2:33:58 (11:45/mi). Her most notable segment came early — she posted the 378th-fastest women's split on the opening mile-to-10K stretch — though she slipped back in the women's standings over the final miles. Rachel Ross (4th, 2:39:45) and Joyce Dendo (5th, 2:42:40) were separated by just under three minutes, both continuing to move up the women's standings through the second half.

Georgia Davis, 69, of Vancouver, WA, was the eldest in the group and brought it home last in 3:45:41 — a finish that still required covering 13.1 miles at pace on a warm November morning. Eleven women toed the line; eleven crossed it.