NB Podium Women: Lace Zhong Runs Away With It

• Zhong wins in 1:15:19 — a full 4 minutes and 12 seconds clear of runner-up Shay Stoklos, an emphatic margin in an 11K mountain race.
• The final stretch settled the order: Zhong posted the fastest women's split on the Snow King→Finish segment; Stoklos was 3rd-fastest, van Gorden 4th — the closing leg mirrored the podium exactly.
• Stoklos and van Gorden were separated by just 1:03 at the line — tight enough to keep second place genuinely in play deep into the race.
• All three held their gender places from start to finish — 1st, 2nd, and 3rd — meaning the NB Podium women's race had no position changes, only a growing gap at the front.

Lace Zhong, 28, from Oakland, controlled this race wire to wire. She held the lead among the women from the opening checkpoint through the finish, and her 11:01/mile average — across a course climbing and descending between roughly 6,200 and 7,500 feet in 87°F heat — tells you this was a performance built on sustained pressure rather than a single decisive surge. The gap she opened wasn't a late burst; it was accumulative, relentless.

The Snow King→Finish segment is where the race's final story was written in the clearest terms. Zhong was the fastest woman on that closing stretch, and the order behind her held firm: Stoklos third-fastest, van Gorden fourth. For Shay Stoklos, 30, of San Francisco, second place in 1:19:31 was a solid result, but the 4:12 deficit to Zhong was never seriously threatened. Elio van Gorden, 25, also out of San Francisco, crossed in 1:20:34 — just 63 seconds behind Stoklos — making the battle for the final podium spot the race's most competitive subplot.

At altitude and in genuine summer heat, three finishers running sub-1:21 for a mountain 11K is no small thing. Zhong simply had another level entirely on this day, and the scoreboard showed it from the first checkpoint to the last.