F35-39: Coppel Dominates the Back Half to Claim the Age Group

• Patricia Coppel won the F35-39 group in 1:32:57 (7:05/mi), holding 2nd among all women from start to finish.
• Coppel and Julia Donovan posted the 2nd- and 3rd-fastest women's splits on the 10K-to-Finish stretch — the top two ran away from the field in the second half.
• O'Neal Crawford climbed from 5th to 4th among women with the 5th-fastest women's closing split, overtaking Valerie Patenotte, who faded from 4th to 6th among women late.
• Anna Stinson and Kathleen Hanson finished in an identical clock time of 2:18:54 — timing finer than the display separated them into 14th and 15th.

Patricia Coppel ran a composed, controlled race — sitting 2nd among women at the 10K checkpoint and never wavering from there. Her 7:05/mi average across 13.1 miles on a warm, humid December morning (60°F and 85% humidity isn't the gift the calendar implies) was the class of the F35-39 field by nearly three minutes. The Roswell, GA runner's 2nd-fastest women's closing split confirmed this wasn't a front-loaded effort — she was still moving with purpose when it mattered most.

Julia Donovan, running in her home city of Huntsville, was the closest thing to a shadow Coppel had. Donovan's 1:35:45 (7:18/mi) and the 3rd-fastest women's closing split gave her a clear second in the age group, with a 2:48 gap back to O'Neal Crawford in third. Crawford was the day's most notable mover in this group, climbing from 5th to 4th among women on the strength of the 5th-fastest closing split among the women — a strong finish that came at Valerie Patenotte's expense. Patenotte had held 4th among women through 10K but slipped to 6th overall by the finish line.

Jennifer Schneider rounded out the top five with a 1:49:20, moving from 11th to 9th among women on the closing stretch — another back-half improver in an age group that clearly rewarded patience. Behind the top five, the field spread across nearly an hour of finishing times, with 20 individually listed finishers and five more beyond them making up a 25-strong F35-39 group that brought runners from across the Southeast and well beyond.