Barks & Brews 5K: Bella Almaraz Leads the F70-74 Group Wire to Wire

• Bella Almaraz won the F70-74 age group in 30:21 (9:46/mi), finishing 3 minutes clear of runner-up June Montuori.
• June Montuori held second place throughout, crossing in 31:21 (10:06/mi) to secure the silver spot comfortably.
• Karin Boston and Lisa Dewitt waged the race's closest internal battle — separated by just 1:17 at the finish (38:37 vs. 39:54) after trading positions through the middle miles.
• All 14 women in the F70-74 age group finished the course on a warm, breezy Sacramento morning.

Bella Almaraz, 73, of Sacramento made her move early and never looked back. She entered the women's field around 146th place at the first checkpoint and steadily worked her way forward, reaching 140th among all women by the finish — a quiet but consistent climb through the pack. Her 9:46/mi average was the standard-setter for the age group, and she posted the 143rd-fastest women's split on the 2M-to-3M closing stretch, confirming she had plenty left in the tank when it counted most.

June Montuori made the trip from Auburn and earned every inch of second place. Running at 10:06/mi, she tracked a parallel trajectory through the women's field — moving from 164th to 165th overall among women, a remarkably steady performance with almost no positional drift across the entire race. The gap to Almaraz was a consistent three minutes; this wasn't a race that got away from her so much as one where the winner simply had another gear.

Behind them, Karin Boston and Lisa Dewitt turned the 5K into their own private contest. Boston's strongest segment came on the 1M-to-2M stretch, where she posted the 281st-fastest women's split in that portion and climbed from 315th to 290th among women by the finish. Dewitt ran a similar pattern but faded slightly in the back half, slipping from 298th to 313th among women after the midpoint. The 1:17 margin between them at the tape reflects a genuine battle that played out across all three miles.

The back half of the F70-74 field spread across a wide range of finishing times, from Beverly Shimizu's 47:23 through to Nancy Castaneda's 1:21:04 — but every one of the 14 starters crossed the line, which on a sunny 68-degree morning with a 14-mph wind is a result worth noting on its own.