F20-24: Grace Loibach Nawowuna Defends Her Boilermaker Title

• Back-to-back champion: Grace Loibach Nawowuna won the F20-24 field in 49:39 — one year after claiming the overall women's title here in 2024 (49:18), she returned to Utica and won again.
• Top of the women's field: Nawowuna held 2nd among all women from the opening 5K through the finish, posting the 2nd-fastest women's split on the 5K–10K segment — all of this in 75°F heat and 90% humidity.
• A 5-minute gap to 2nd: Caroline Garrett finished 2nd in the F20-24 field in 54:49 (5:53/mi), more than five minutes behind Nawowuna — a commanding margin by any measure.
• 4th and 5th to the wire: Isolde McManus (4th, 1:02:59) and Sophia Bisognano (5th, 1:02:59) finished in the same displayed time, but the places confirm McManus edged ahead; both ran strong closing 10K–finish splits, with McManus posting the 29th-fastest women's closing split and Bisognano the 38th.

Grace Loibach Nawowuna came to Utica with unfinished business — or rather, finished business she wanted to repeat. The 21-year-old from West Chester, PA, won the overall women's race here in 2024, and on a humid Sunday morning she made her return look almost routine. She sat 2nd among all women at every checkpoint and never wavered, crossing in 49:39 at a 5:20/mi average. That's 21 seconds slower than her 2024 winning time, but in conditions this thick — 90% humidity, 75°F — holding that kind of pace for 9.3 miles is a genuine feat. Her 2nd-fastest women's split on the 5K-to-10K segment showed she wasn't just surviving the middle miles; she was racing them.

Behind her, Hannah Ielfield (3rd, 55:31, 5:57/mi) and Caroline Garrett (2nd, 54:49, 5:53/mi) rounded out the podium. Garrett was the more aggressive closer, posting the 14th-fastest women's split from 10K to the finish — a strong finishing kick that nonetheless couldn't close a gap to Nawowuna that had been established long before. Ielfield, who had moved up to 15th among women by 5K before settling to 16th, held steady through the back half.

The battle for 4th and 5th played out in the closing miles. Sophia Bisognano (42nd among women at 5K) and Isolde McManus (61st at 5K) were both charging — McManus especially, climbing from 61st among women at the first checkpoint all the way to 37th by the finish with the 29th-fastest women's closing split. She nipped Bisognano by a sliver, both clocking 1:02:59 on the display, with the timing finer than that separating them. Further back, Camryn Cortez (6th, 1:05:23), Amelia Bowman-Mccoy (7th, 1:05:30), and Kathryn McCarthy (8th, 1:05:32) finished within nine seconds of each other — a tight cluster that made for real racing all the way to the line in a 492-finisher field.