Women's Race: Nicole Lane Clancy Dominates from Wire to Wire

• Clancy never relinquished the lead, holding 1st among women at every checkpoint and posting the fastest women's split on the Mile 4→Mile 15.6 segment en route to a 2:02:45 finish at 6:08/mi.
• Jonah Weeks surged from 6th to 2nd, running the second-fastest women's split on that same long middle segment to finish in 2:11:59 — 9 minutes and 14 seconds back of Clancy but a clear gap ahead of the rest of the field.
• Maureen Finn improved on her own benchmark, finishing 3rd in 2:16:54 after placing 2nd here in 2025 (2:19:31) — and she got there with the second-fastest women's split on the Mile 15.6→Mile 16 stretch, a late surge that helped her move from 4th to 3rd on the day.
• Sarah Jensen, 45, held 3rd for most of the race before Finn's late move nudged her to 4th at 2:17:47 — just 53 seconds separating those two across 20 miles.

Nicole Lane Clancy turned this into a masterclass in front-running. The 32-year-old from Rancho Cordova was first among women from the opening miles and never looked back, covering 20 miles at a 6:08/mi clip to finish in 2:02:45. No one else in the women's field came within nine minutes of her.

Behind Clancy, the real drama was Jonah Weeks' move through the field. Starting the race 6th among women, Weeks ran the second-fastest women's split on the Mile 4→Mile 15.6 segment — the race's longest and most decisive stretch — to vault all the way to 2nd by Mile 15.6 and hold it to the finish in 2:11:59. Meanwhile, Sarah Jensen ran a controlled 3rd-place race for most of the morning at 6:53/mi, but Maureen Finn had other ideas late. Finn, who had finished 2nd here in 2025 in 2:19:31, posted the second-fastest women's split on the Mile 15.6→Mile 16 segment to close out 3rd in 2:16:54 — a 2:37 improvement on last year's time and a podium finish earned with a well-timed kick.

Lauren Mulkey Williams delivered one of the day's best finishing moves, climbing from 8th all the way to 5th with the fourth-fastest women's split on the final Mile 16→Finish segment, crossing in 2:19:38. Kathryn Loken (2:20:15), Erin Rasmussen (2:20:32), and Michelle Tsang (2:20:51) filled out a tightly packed 6th-through-8th, separated by just 36 seconds across three runners — a testament to how competitive the women's field was throughout a crisp November morning in Folsom.