Way Too Cool 50K — F50-59: Bree Lambert-Sanders Runs Away With It

• Bree Lambert-Sanders won the F50-59 age group in 5:00:04 (9:40/mi), finishing 9th among all women — a commanding 32-minute gap over the field.
• The top-2 gap tells the story: Lambert-Sanders beat runner-up Ilyce Shugall by 32:37, while the next three finishers were separated by just 22 minutes (5:32:41 to 5:09 to 6:31:19).
• Leah Cox (age 53) posted the 35th-fastest women's split on the Fire Station→Quarry segment, edging past Susan Truong to claim 5th by just under 6 minutes.
• The bottom half of the F50-59 field spread across a 1:15:27 window from Leanne Peiser (7:05:26) to Jennifer James (8:20:53).

Bree Lambert-Sanders, 56, from San Jose, made the F50-59 race her own from the opening miles. Tracking as high as 9th among all women by the HWY 49 checkpoint and holding that position to the finish, she ran a steady 9:40/mi across 31 miles of Cool's notoriously technical terrain. Her 7th-fastest women's split on the ALT→HWY 49 segment showed she wasn't just managing the race — she was pushing it. A five-hour finish on a course like this, at 56, is a result worth underlining.

Behind her, Ilyce Shugall (50, San Rafael) and Sabrina van Horn (50, Auburn) ran their own race for 2nd and 3rd. Shugall's 5:32:41 at 10:42/mi held off van Horn's 6:09:14 by nearly 37 minutes, with both athletes posting competitive splits on the Fire Station→Quarry stretch — Shugall 16th-fastest among women on that segment, van Horn close behind at 18th. Van Horn did slip from 19th to 25th among women through the middle of the race and never recovered that ground, which likely explains the gap.

Susan Truong (55) and Leah Cox (53) rounded out the top five in a tight cluster, finishing within six minutes of each other. Cox, who moved from 41st to 37th among women across the race, was the stronger closer of the two, logging the 35th-fastest women's split on Fire Station→Quarry. From 6th through 12th, the field stretched out considerably — Shannon Brown, Consuelo Valverde, Heather Sutherland, Nadia Costa, Jeanine Kobza, and Jennifer James all finishing between 7:20 and 8:21, each earning their finisher's medal on a day that tested every one of the 12 women who toed the line in this age group.