San Francisco Marathon F50-54: Resney Edges Out a 38-Second Thriller at the Top

• Romney Resney, 53, wins F50-54 in 3:48:11 (8:42/mi), holding off Lan Shen by just 38 seconds in the closest battle of the day.
• Lan Shen storms back: after sitting as low as 156th among women in the early miles, Shen climbed all the way to 112th by the finish — the most dramatic upward charge in the top two.
• Paula Gazarkiewicz, 5th in 4:12:59, made one of the field's biggest moves, surging from 666th among women in the opening segment all the way to 288th by the finish line.
• 75 finishers completed the F50-54 race, ranging from Resney's 3:48:11 down to the 20th-place Sara Hollingsworth at 4:49:38.

Romney Resney of Belvedere crossed in 3:48:11 to claim the F50-54 title on a cool, damp San Francisco morning — 54°F and 94% humidity made for heavy air across all 26.2 miles. Resney averaged 8:42/mi and, notably, posted the 77th-fastest women's split on the 2.2-to-5.7-mile stretch early on, suggesting she went out with genuine intent. Her gender placement tells a different story as the race wore on, sliding from 58th among women at the first checkpoint all the way back to 119th before rallying to 107th at the finish — a sign that others were closing, hard.

None more so than Lan Shen. The 50-year-old from Arcadia ran a near-mirror-image race: cautious early (156th among women), steady through the middle, and relentlessly progressive in the second half, posting the 96th-fastest women's split on the Garmin Hill Challenge segment and climbing to 112th among women by the finish. She crossed in 3:48:49 — 38 seconds behind Resney. The finish times were close; the journeys to get there were anything but the same. Shen ran the back half faster; Resney simply had enough of a cushion to hold on.

Emi Tomoda rounded out the podium in 3:56:24 (9:01/mi), finishing 3rd and posting the 124th-fastest women's split between miles 14.95 and 18 — a strong mid-race push that helped her climb from 299th among women early on to 177th at the finish. Ruth Rowe (4th, 4:09:02) and Paula Gazarkiewicz (5th, 4:12:59) completed the top five, with Gazarkiewicz's journey from 666th among women in the opening miles to 288th at the finish standing as one of the more eye-catching progressions in the entire F50-54 field. Ellen Rothman (6th, 4:14:20) and Elisa De Martel (7th, 4:21:05) rounded out a competitive top ten that stretched to 4:25:34 with Kelly Poe in 10th.