F20-24 at CIM 2024: Sydney Friedel Runs Down the Field Late

• Sydney Friedel wins in 2:43:19 (6:14/mi), finishing 3 minutes 44 seconds clear of runner-up Alauna Carstens — the most dominant margin on the podium.
• Alauna Carstens blazed the opening 10K with the 27th-fastest women's split on that segment, but her gender standing slid from 18th to 51st by the finish as the pace caught up with her.
• Alison Ray and Yilin Wu staged the strongest late charges, both climbing from outside the top 80 among women at the start to finish 3rd and 4th in the F20-24 group — separated by just 9 seconds.
• Erinn Hill and Yilin Wu both clocked 6:26/mi but finished 11 seconds apart, with Hill edging 5th and Wu 4th by the timing margin.

Sydney Friedel controlled this race from a position of quiet authority. Running out of Kansas City, the 23-year-old held 51st among women through the first 30K, then moved to 42nd by 35K — a gain that coincided with her 33rd-fastest women's split on that 30K-to-35K stretch. From there she held firm to the tape, finishing in 2:43:19 at 6:14/mi, a full 3:44 ahead of second place in a 181-runner F20-24 field. This was a race won on patience and late-race execution.

The most dramatic storyline belonged to Alauna Carstens. The 20-year-old from Olympia went out hard — her 5K-to-10K split ranked 27th among all women — and sat 18th among women at that early checkpoint. But the pace she set was unsustainable. By 20K she'd dropped to 37th among women, and by the finish she was 51st. She still claimed 2nd in the F20-24 group in a solid 2:47:03, but the race told a clear cautionary tale about front-loading a marathon.

The back half of the podium told the opposite story. Alison Ray (Montreat, NC) and Yilin Wu (San Marino, CA) both ran patient, progressive races — Ray climbing from 90th among women at 5K all the way to 58th by the finish, Wu from 100th to 62nd. They crossed within 9 seconds of each other, Ray in 2:48:25 and Wu in 2:48:34, with Wu posting the 35th-fastest women's split from 40K to the finish to nearly run Ray down. Erinn Hill, who had been as high as 48th among women in the middle miles, faded slightly late and finished 5th in 2:48:45 — just 11 seconds behind Wu despite matching her 6:26/mi average pace.