F55-59 at CIM 2024: Heaphy holds off Smith in a sub-3:14 showdown

• Alison Heaphy won the F55-59 age group in 3:13:31 (7:23/mi), the only finisher under 3:14 in the group.
• Shannon Smith finished 2nd in 3:14:10 — just 39 seconds back — with a strong closing stretch powered by the 274th-fastest split among women on the final 40K-to-finish segment.
• Liz Guerrini rounded out the podium in 3:15:15, separated from Smith by 65 seconds — meaning the top three were covered by just 1:44.
• The top 20 in the F55-59 group ranged from 3:13:31 to 3:45:58, a spread of more than 32 minutes across a 126-finisher field.

Alison Heaphy of Troy, NY, ran a measured, progressive race to claim the F55-59 title at the California International Marathon. Starting well back in the women's field, she moved steadily through the pack — from 493rd among women at the first checkpoint all the way to 369th by the finish — averaging a brisk 7:23 per mile across all 26.2. She didn't need a flashy late surge; she simply ran the group's best time from wire to wire.

Shannon Smith of Washington, DC, made things interesting. She was actually running slightly behind Heaphy's position in the women's field through the early checkpoints, but she found another gear late, posting the 274th-fastest women's split on the final 40K-to-finish stretch. That closer wasn't quite enough to reel in Heaphy — 39 seconds is a real gap at this pace — but it cemented a strong 2nd-place finish in 3:14:10.

Liz Guerrini of Long Beach rounded out the podium in 3:15:15, running consistently and holding her position in the women's field from 25K onward, finishing 409th among women. The top three in F55-59 were separated by under two minutes, making this one of the tighter podium battles of the day. Jennifer Fay (4th, 3:21:11) and Romney Resney (5th, 3:22:34) were next, running in a similar pack through the mid-race segments before the gap to the top three became definitive.