California International Marathon F55-59: Breen edges Schwartz by one second in a 128-woman thriller

• 1 second apart at the line: Verity Breen (3:12:37) and Lisa Schwartz (3:12:38) — both averaging 7:21/mi — produced the closest finish in the F55-59 field, with Breen holding the edge by the slimmest of margins.
• A tale of two trajectories: Breen faded through the women's field across the second half (276th among women at 5K, 434th by the finish), while Schwartz ran the opposite race — starting 471st among women and surging to 435th by the line, nearly catching Breen in the process.
• Third and fourth separated by 31 seconds: Carrie Scace (3:17:54, 7:33/mi) and Julia Wang (3:18:25, 7:34/mi) traded places through the middle miles before Scace secured the bronze.
• Cool, calm conditions: 46°F and nearly calm winds made for solid marathon weather — and the times across the top ten reflect it, with the top five all finishing under 3:22.

Verity Breen, 59, crossed in 3:12:37 to win the F55-59 age group at the 2025 California International Marathon — but she had to earn every one of those final seconds. Breen ran a front-loaded race, sitting 276th among women at the 5K mark before gradually settling back through the field. By the finish she was 434th among women, meaning the pack was closing around her. What she had was just enough: a one-second cushion over Lisa Schwartz of New York.

Schwartz, 55, ran the mirror image of Breen's race. She was 471st among women at 5K and spent the entire day reeling in runners ahead of her, posting the 326th-fastest women's split from 40K to the finish — a strong late surge that brought her all the way to 435th among women at the line. That relentless forward momentum fell exactly one second short of the title, making her 3:12:38 one of the more agonizing runner-up finishes of the day.

Behind them, Carrie Scace (3:17:54) and Julia Wang (3:18:25) ran a tightly contested battle for third and fourth. Scace, 56, of Toronto, held steady throughout, while Wang, 59, of Fremont, was actually moving through the field between 25K and 30K before fading slightly in the closing miles. Yanan Yang of Edina rounded out the top five in 3:21:40 (7:42/mi), having made one of the more notable moves in the group — jumping from 655th among women at 5K all the way to 557th by 30K before settling back to 609th at the finish.

The depth of this field was real: 128 finishers in the F55-59 age group, with Romney Resney (3:24:38), Stacey Stern (3:26:50), and Yueh-Ling Lin (3:27:17) all finishing within 15 minutes of the winner, and the top ten packed inside 16 minutes total. On a cool December morning in Sacramento, the women of F55-59 delivered a race worth watching all the way to the final second.