F40-49: Mannhard Reclaims Leadville, Macdonald Makes It a Race Worth Remembering

• Jacquie Mannhard, 41, wins F40-49 in 20:16:49 (12:10/mi), holding 2nd among women through most of the race before surging to claim the top spot in the final miles.
• Ailsa Macdonald, 46, leads wire-to-near-wire — 1st among women through five checkpoints — but fades to 4th among women and 2nd in F40-49 at 20:29:57, a 13:08 gap at the line.
• Summer Frazier, 45, posts the race's biggest charge — entering as 35th among women at the first checkpoint, she climbed all the way to 9th among women by the finish, landing 4th in F40-49 at 23:05:15.
• 20 listed finishers earned the coveted Leadville belt buckle — every one of them under the 30-hour cutoff at this Race Across the Sky.

Jacquie Mannhard came into Leadville with history here: she won the women's race outright in 2023. This time she ran in the shadow of Ailsa Macdonald for the better part of 100 miles, sitting 2nd among women from the opening checkpoint through mile 50 — then slipping to 4th around the 60-mile mark before fighting back. The turning point was the 8.6M→20.5M segment, where Mannhard posted the 2nd-fastest women's split on that stretch, and Macdonald posted the fastest — a sign of just how hard both were pushing early. What separated them in the end wasn't that segment but the long, brutal miles after it: Mannhard reassembled her race, climbed back to 3rd and then 2nd among women, and crossed in 20:16:49.

Macdonald's story is its own kind of remarkable. The 46-year-old from Cochrane, AB led the entire women's field from checkpoint one through checkpoint five — five consecutive checkpoints at the front — running the fastest women's split on the 8.6M→20.5M leg. But the back half of Leadville, with its second crossing of Hope Pass at 12,500 feet, extracted its toll. She slipped from 1st to 2nd among women and then to 4th, finishing 2nd in F40-49 at 20:29:57. That's not a collapse — it's a 12:18/mi average across 100 miles at altitude — but it tells the story of a race that got away in the final act.

Silke Koester, 43, rounded out the podium in 22:05:03, quietly and consistently working her way up — from 8th among women at mid-race to 5th by the finish — with the 4th-fastest women's split on the late 78.7M→84.2M segment showing she still had legs when many were fading. Behind her, Carrie Stafford (5th, 23:35:17) and Lisa Hughey (6th, 24:29:43) pushed deep into the night, while Kathryn Campbell (7th, 26:11:42) and Laurie Yliniemi (8th, 26:18:31) finished within seven minutes of each other after more than 26 hours on course. All 20 listed finishers came home under 30 hours — each one earning their buckle on one of the hardest hundred-mile courses in the world.