NB30-39 Women: Lucas Leads Wire to Wire for the Division Title

• Tau Lucas won the NB30-39 field in 4:13:41 (22:41/mi), holding 5th among women at the finish.
• Joshua Strong was 2nd in 4:24:21, a gap of 10:40 back — and posted the 6th-fastest women's split on KT 22→Siberia.
• Steph Salazar closed in 4:48:32 but owned the fastest women's split on Snow King→KT 22, the standout segment punch of the day.
• All three finishers were 31 years old, making this one of the tightest age clusters you'll find in any field.

Tau Lucas ran a controlled, consistent race across the Broken Arrow 18K's punishing high-elevation terrain — from the 6,200-foot valley floor up toward 8,820 feet at High Camp — and never relinquished her position among the women's field. She sat 6th among women through the middle stages of the course before moving up to 5th by the final stretch, and she backed that finish with the 4th-fastest women's split on the Siberia→High Camp segment, one of the most oxygen-taxing climbs on the course. At 22:41 per mile across nearly 18K of skyrace terrain, that's a performance built on patience and strength in thin air.

Joshua Strong gave chase the whole way. Sitting 5th among women through the opening legs, she and Lucas were running in lockstep positionally until the final segments, where Lucas edged ahead to 5th and Strong settled into 6th. The 10:40 gap between them at the tape is real, but Strong's 6th-fastest women's split on KT 22→Siberia shows she had genuine speed on that technical stretch — a reminder that the margin could have been different on another day.

Steph Salazar ran her own race from Seattle. She held 7th among women throughout and finished 35 minutes behind Lucas, but her fastest women's split on Snow King→KT 22 is worth pausing on — no other woman in the field moved through that segment faster. It's a single-leg highlight in an otherwise difficult day, and it suggests there's real upside in her running on this kind of terrain.