Napa Valley Marathon F25-29: Delaney Miller Pulls Away for a Commanding Win

• Delaney Miller (Stanford) won the F25-29 field in 2:54:47 (6:40/mi), finishing 5th among all women — more than 7 minutes clear of 2nd place.
• Miller posted the 4th-fastest women's split on the 13.1M–20M stretch, the segment where she moved from 7th to 5th among the women's field.
• Caroline Goggins (San Francisco) and Sarah Gage (Corrales) ran nearly identical finishes — 3:02:28 and 3:04:37 — but it was Goggins who ran the faster closing stretch, posting the 12th-fastest women's 20M–Finish split to Gage's 14th, a catch-up that sealed 2nd place.
• Places 6 through 12 were decided by just 31 seconds across seven runners, with Cady Lauren Whicker (3:22:10), Laura Krasovec (3:22:21), Grace Crowell (3:22:41), and Ellie Johnson (3:22:42) separated by a combined 32 seconds.

Delaney Miller didn't just win the F25-29 field at Napa — she dominated it. Running at a 6:40/mi clip on a cool, calm March morning, the 26-year-old from Stanford moved steadily through the women's field all day, climbing from 8th among women at the first checkpoint to 5th by the finish. Her strongest stretch came between miles 13.1 and 20, where she posted the 4th-fastest women's split on that segment and made her decisive move. The final margin of 7:41 over runner-up Caroline Goggins tells the whole story.

The battle for 2nd was genuinely earned. Goggins (San Francisco, 25) and Sarah Gage (Corrales, 28) both had eventful races — Gage was as high as 9th among women at the first checkpoint before fading to 15th by mile 20, while Goggins slipped back to 16th before rallying. It was the closing stretch that settled it: Goggins ran the 12th-fastest women's 20M-to-Finish split in the field to Gage's 14th, reeling in enough time to finish in 3:02:28 to Gage's 3:04:37. Two different race shapes, one clear result.

Further back, the race delivered a genuinely chaotic cluster. Six runners — Whicker, Krasovec, Crowell, Johnson, Poppe, and Wilson — were packed into 75 seconds between 3:22:10 and 3:23:35, with Crowell (3:22:41) and Johnson (3:22:42) separated by a single second for 8th and 9th. In a 112-runner F25-29 field, that kind of density in the middle of the pack made for a compelling chase that lasted well into the final miles.