F20-29 at American River 50 — 25 Miler: Bilo dominates, Kerins gives chase, and a sprint for 3rd defines the back half

• Peyton Bilo won the F20-29 field in 3:16:36 (7:52/mi), holding 1st among women from start to finish and posting the fastest women's split on the Rattlesnake Bar→Last Gasp segment.
• Kate Kerins shadowed her the entire way — 2nd among women at every checkpoint — finishing in 3:40:17, a gap of 23:41 back.
• Madison Petersen and Tamren Wilson finished 3rd and 4th just 1:15 apart (4:44:41 vs. 4:45:56), with Wilson climbing from 5th to 4th in the women's field over the second half on the strength of the 3rd-fastest women's Last Gasp→Finish split.
• Six women finished the F20-29 field on a clear, mild day in Auburn — conditions that likely favored the front-runners' sustained 7:52 and 8:49 paces.

Peyton Bilo, 27, from El Dorado Hills, ran a wire-to-wire race that was never seriously threatened. She sat 1st among women at every checkpoint and punctuated the middle stretch with the fastest women's split on Rattlesnake Bar→Last Gasp — a combination of consistent pace and a decisive move through the race's most demanding terrain. At 7:52 per mile for 25 miles, she left the F20-29 field well behind.

Kate Kerins matched Bilo's positional discipline perfectly — 2nd among women at every split — and backed it with the 2nd-fastest women's Rattlesnake Bar→Last Gasp split. She ran a clean, controlled 8:49/mi to finish in 3:40:17, a worthy runner-up performance in a field where the top two were clearly separated from the rest.

The real drama unfolded further back. Petersen and Wilson were separated by just 1:15 at the finish, but Wilson earned that gap the hard way — she was 5th among women at the first checkpoint, moved to 4th by the second, and held it home on the strength of the 3rd-fastest women's Last Gasp→Finish split. Petersen's 6th-fastest women's Rattlesnake Bar→Last Gasp split had built enough of a cushion that she held on for 3rd, but only barely. Hazel Critchfield rounded out the top five in 5:04:28, while Dianna Gomez completed the six-woman field in 5:49:24.