Women's Marathon: Relf leads wire-to-wire in the Sacramento fog

• Ashley Relf, 43, wins in 3:25:32 (7:51/mi), holding 1st place from the opening segment through the finish — and posting the fastest women's split on the Out & Back→Lap 1 leg to boot.
• Rebekah Gerber runs 3:34:52 — nine minutes back but a massive leap from her 3:55:30 and 3rd-place finish at this same race in 2025, claiming the runner-up spot with the second-fastest Out & Back→Lap 1 split among the women.
• Oluwakemi Shamonda moves up, starting 4th among women and climbing to 3rd by Lap 1, holding that position all the way to a 3:53:01 finish — the third-fastest Out & Back→Lap 1 split in the women's field.
• Rosanne Ramirez and Jeanette Rowe swap places repeatedly through the middle laps before Ramirez locks down 4th (3:55:55) and Rowe settles into 5th (4:13:21) — separated by nearly 18 minutes at the line.

Fifty degrees and heavy fog blanketed Sacramento on race morning, and Ashley Relf of Mill Valley ran right through it. The 43-year-old never relinquished the lead, sitting 1st at every checkpoint from the Out & Back through the final lap. Her 7:51/mi average — combined with the fastest women's split on the opening Out & Back→Lap 1 segment — made her dominance as emphatic as the scoreboard suggests.

Behind her, Rebekah Gerber delivered the most compelling improvement story of the day. The 27-year-old from Phoenix, OR finished 3rd here in 2025 in 3:55:30; on Saturday she ran 3:34:32, cutting more than 21 minutes off that mark and stepping squarely onto the podium in 2nd. Oluwakemi Shamonda of Sacramento completed the top three in 3:53:01, having quietly moved up from 4th to 3rd during the first lap and never looking back.

The race's most entertaining chess match played out in the 4th-through-5th battle. Rosanne Ramirez (El Dorado Hills) started 3rd, slipped as far back as 5th by Lap 1, then clawed her way forward — posting the third-fastest Lap 3→Lap 4 split among the women — to claim 4th in 3:55:55. Jeanette Rowe mirrored that volatility in reverse, rising to 4th by Lap 2 before fading to 5th at 4:13:21. Lindsay Carl rounded out the top six in 4:15:52, while 66-year-old Angie Pozzi of Granite Bay finished 7th in 4:30:56 — one of the more quietly impressive performances in a 14-woman field that stretched all the way to Alena Hansen's 7:49:52 in 14th.