Marine Corps Marathon F25-29: Tessa Barrett Dominates from Wire to Wire

• Tessa Barrett (Arlington, VA) won the F25-29 field in 2:39:35 (6:05/mi), never relinquishing her lead across all nine tracked checkpoints.
• Savannah Peppenhorst (2:53:30) and Megan Walsh (2:53:58) finished 2nd and 3rd — separated by just 28 seconds after 26.2 miles, with Walsh charging from 18th at the 15K mark to claim the podium.
• Dee Buchholz posted the 5th-fastest women's split on the 10K→15K stretch, climbing from 15th to 8th by mid-race before finishing 5th in 2:55:21.
• 1,282 women finished in the F25-29 field, making it one of the deepest cohorts on the course.

Tessa Barrett, racing in her home city of Arlington, VA, made the F25-29 race look like a solo time trial. She held the top women's position from the opening checkpoint all the way through the finish, and she wasn't just leading — she was pulling away. Her fastest women's split on the 15K→21K stretch, run at a 6:05/mi average, put more than 14 minutes between her and second place by the tape. On a crisp 43°F morning past the monuments of Washington D.C., conditions were about as good as marathon racing gets, and Barrett used every degree of it.

Behind her, the real drama was a sustained catch-up story. Megan Walsh (San Diego, CA) started the day buried in 18th among the women and methodically picked off rivals checkpoint by checkpoint, cracking the top 10 by the final stretch to finish 3rd in 2:53:58. Savannah Peppenhorst (Suwanee, GA) ran the 2nd-fastest women's split on the 15K→21K segment and held 3rd for much of the race before Walsh closed the gap — their finish times, 2:53:30 and 2:53:58, were separated by 28 seconds, but the final miles told the story of two very different trajectories.

Gabby Skopec (Coralville, IA) was another mover, climbing from 17th at the 15K to 8th by the penultimate checkpoint before settling into 4th in 2:54:13 — just 15 seconds behind Walsh. Rounding out the top five, Dee Buchholz (Arlington, VA) used a strong 10K→15K surge to move from 15th to 8th, ultimately finishing 5th in 2:55:21. The top five were separated by fewer than 16 minutes — but the day belonged entirely to Barrett.