Kaua'i Half Marathon F35-39: Simon Dominates in 1:34:26

• Lisa Simon won the F35-39 group in 1:34:26 (7:12/mi), running 3rd among all women at the start and holding 4th through the finish — the class of the age group by more than 11 minutes.
• Simon posted the 5th-fastest women's split on the first major segment (Start→11.05 Mile), signaling her lead was built early and never threatened.
• Lauren Orr and Susie Lozick ran tightly for 2nd and 3rd — separated by just 1:51 at the line — with Orr's 16th-fastest women's split on that opening stretch edging Lozick's 23rd.
• Rebecca Omalley and Sarah Yefimov finished 8th and 9th in a near-dead heat: 2:01:55 and 2:02:00, just five seconds apart across 13.1 miles on a warm, humid Kaua'i morning.

Lisa Simon made this look like a different race than everyone else was running. The Cambridge runner crossed in 1:34:26 at a 7:12-per-mile clip — a pace that kept her 4th among all women in the field while the rest of the F35-39 group was still well out on course. Her margin over runner-up Lauren Orr was 11 minutes and 14 seconds, a gap that tells you everything about how thoroughly she controlled this race from the front.

Behind Simon, the real competition was Orr and Lozick trading positions through 77-degree heat and 69% humidity. Orr, 39, of Portland came in at 1:45:40, while Lozick, 35, of Sierra Madre finished in 1:47:31. Orr's stronger opening segment — 16th-fastest among women on the first stretch compared to Lozick's 23rd — proved to be the difference, and she never relinquished second place. Kaitlyn Szekalski, the local Kapaa runner, rounded out the podium in 4th at 1:50:35, posting the 25th-fastest women's split on the closing stretch to hold off Alyssa Benoist (1:54:02) by nearly four minutes.

Further down the leaderboard, the battle between Rebecca Omalley and Sarah Yefimov was one of the tightest of the day — five seconds separated them after 13.1 miles, with Omalley taking 8th in 2:01:55 and Yefimov 9th in 2:02:00. In a field of 123 finishers, those five seconds were hard-earned in the Kaua'i humidity.