Broken Arrow IFC 2024 — F50-59: Palmiero-Winters Dominates in the Heat

• Amy Palmiero-Winters won F50-59 in 1:49:06 (21:49/mi avg), finishing 15 minutes ahead of 2nd place in a seven-woman field.
• Rose McKay and Lesley Dellamonica staged the race's tightest battle: just 1 minute 39 seconds separated 2nd and 3rd across more than two hours of racing.
• Bonnie Sauer rounded out the top four, finishing 6 minutes 21 seconds back of Dellamonica in 4th.
• At the back, Angela Orroth and Gina Gunning finished in an extraordinarily close 5th and 6th — their displayed times both read 2:51:41 / 2:51:42, separated by a single second.

Amy Palmiero-Winters, 51, from Hicksville, NY, made this race look like a different event from everyone else's. Her 1:49:06 wasn't just a win — it was a statement, with a margin of nearly a quarter-hour over the field. On a course sitting above 6,200 feet in 91°F heat, that kind of gap is hard to overstate. The thin air and blazing sun at Palisades Tahoe can grind down pace for anyone not fully dialed in to the altitude, and Palmiero-Winters simply ran away from the competition regardless.

Behind her, the real drama was the fight for 2nd. Rose McKay (Santa Monica, CA) and Lesley Dellamonica (Truckee, CA) ran the race of the day between themselves — McKay finishing in 2:03:57 and Dellamonica in 2:05:36, a gap of just 99 seconds after more than two hours of work. Notably, Dellamonica is a Truckee local, giving her a legitimate altitude edge on a day when the combination of heat and elevation made every extra effort costly.

Bonnie Sauer of South Lake Tahoe — another local — came home 4th in 2:11:57, more than six minutes behind Dellamonica but well clear of the rest of the field. Then came the race's most remarkable near-miss: Angela Orroth and Gina Gunning crossed in 5th and 6th, their times differing by just one second — 2:51:41 to 2:51:42. The timing system separated them where the naked eye couldn't. Darlene Shimamoto completed the seven-woman field in 3:08:48, earning her finish on a brutally hot afternoon at altitude.