Rocket City Half Marathon — F25-29: Peters Dominates in the Cold

• Sarah Peters (26, Nashville) won the F25-29 age group in 1:31:53 — a 7:01/mi pace that also placed her 9th among all women in the race.
• The gap from 1st to 2nd was 8 minutes, 16 seconds — Peters was in a race of her own from the front of the F25-29 field.
• Rachel Joffrion (29, Huntsville) and Chelsey Burks (29, Athens) rounded out the podium, finishing 22nd and 30th among women respectively.
• The 9th-through-10th battle was the tightest of the day: Auburn Cohan (1:52:04) and Lauren Dutch (1:52:08) were separated by just four seconds after 13.1 miles in 29°F wind.

At 29°F with a 16 mph wind cutting through Huntsville, the F25-29 age group sent 131 women to the line — and Sarah Peters made the conditions look irrelevant. Running 7:01 per mile, she crossed in 1:31:53 and landed 9th among all women in the field. The closest challenger, Rachel Joffrion, finished more than eight minutes back. That kind of gap doesn't happen by accident; Peters was simply operating at a different level on this morning.

Joffrion (1:40:09, 7:38/mi) was nonetheless strong in her own right, posting the 23rd-fastest women's split on the back half of the course. Chelsey Burks (1:44:31) held 3rd in the age group and 30th among women, with her 7:58 average pace showing she handled the cold capably. Fourth-place Faith Oneill (1:47:00) and fifth-place Tia Larsen-Calcano (1:47:57) were separated by less than a minute, but both faded slightly in the second half — Oneill slipping from 27th to 35th among women over the final 6.8 miles, Larsen-Calcano from 32nd to 38th.

The most gripping finish in the age group came further down the leaderboard, where Richmond's Lauren Dutch and Madison's Auburn Cohan ran nearly identical races. Cohan crossed in 1:52:04, Dutch in 1:52:08 — four seconds after 13.1 miles in a bitter headwind. Between 6th and 20th place, the spread was just over seven minutes across 15 runners, making the middle of the F25-29 field a genuinely competitive stretch of racing.