Napa Valley Half Marathon: Connie Teague Owns the F35-39 Field

• Connie Teague wins in 1:19:59 — a 6:06/mi clip — the only finisher in the F35-39 field to break 1:21:00.
• Heidi Greenwood ran the second-fastest closing half (9th-fastest women's split on the 6.9M–Finish stretch) to finish 2nd in 1:20:59, just 60 seconds back.
• Kira Wetzel climbed from 21st among women to 17th with the 14th-fastest women's closing split, sealing 3rd in 1:27:19.
• A four-way cluster at 7:12/mi — Traci Scherdell (7th, 1:34:18), Lauren Lovelace (8th, 1:34:19), Alison Johnson (9th, 1:34:26), and Anna Dukes-Delic (10th, 1:34:28) — covered just ten seconds across four places.

On a cold, damp Napa morning — 37°F and 87% humidity at the gun — Connie Teague of Lees Summit put on a commanding performance. She crossed in 1:19:59 at a 6:06/mi average, holding 5th among all women through 6.9 miles before the field shifted around her on the closing stretch, where she posted the 8th-fastest women's split to finish 7th among women overall. Within the F35-39 field, though, no one came close: her margin over 2nd place was a full minute.

Heidi Greenwood of Fargo was the race's other standout story in this field. Running the 9th-fastest women's closing split, she actually moved up in the women's standings over the final stretch — from 9th to 8th — finishing in 1:20:59 at 6:11/mi. The gap to Teague was 60 seconds; the gap to 3rd was nearly six and a half minutes. That tells you everything about how far ahead the top two were.

Kira Wetzel (San Jose, 1:27:19) and Isabel Diaz (San Rafael, 1:28:43) rounded out the podium, both climbing through the women's field on the back half. Wetzel's 14th-fastest women's closing split lifted her four spots among all women; Diaz's 16th-fastest moved her six. Melissa Penwell (Roseville) completed the top five in 1:29:39 but ran against the tide, slipping from 24th to 25th among women on the closing leg.

Places 7 through 10 produced one of the tightest bunches of the morning: Scherdell, Lovelace, Johnson, and Dukes-Delic all clocked 7:12/mi and finished within ten seconds of each other — 1:34:18 through 1:34:28 — a testament to how evenly matched the mid-pack of this 182-finisher field truly was.