Rocket City 10K — F25-29: Mami runs away with it in the cold

• Leahrose Mami won the F25-29 age group in 38:52 at a blistering 6:15/mi, nearly four minutes clear of the field.
• The gap from 1st to 2nd was 3:54 — wider than the gap from 2nd all the way down to 12th place.
• A tight mid-pack cluster: Kelsey Cleveland (9th, 57:57), Amiracal Phillips (9th... 8th, 57:58), and McLain Pabalate (11th, 57:59) were separated by just two seconds across three finishers.
• Rebecca Mulholland of Huntsville rounded out the top four at 48:20, holding off a significant drop-off — 5th place didn't arrive until 55:44.

With 29°F air and a 16 mph wind biting through downtown Huntsville, Leahrose Mami of Northport made it look almost effortless. Her 6:15/mi pace was in a different conversation entirely from the rest of the F25-29 field — runner-up Marja Lopez Tello of Harvest came in at 6:53/mi, itself a strong effort, but she never had a chance to contest the win. Mami's margin of 3:54 was commanding by any measure.

Lopez Tello held second comfortably, finishing in 42:46, with Maria Coffman of Colorado Springs — the lone out-of-state podium finisher — taking third in 46:33. Rebecca Mulholland, racing on home turf in Huntsville, was solid in fourth at 48:20, but after her there was a genuine gap: fifth-place Rebecca Hearn didn't cross until 55:44, nearly seven minutes back.

The most compelling arithmetic of the day came just inside the top ten. Cleveland, Phillips, and Pabalate finished 10th, 9th (wait — 9th, 10th, 11th respectively) within a two-second window — 57:57, 57:58, and 57:59 — each running right at 9:20/mi. Just ahead of them, Vanessa Carpenetti clocked 57:50 in 8th. In a 49-woman field braving genuine winter conditions, that kind of clustering makes for a finish line worth watching.