SF Half Marathon F65-69: Magarshack Dominates, Mayes and Levenson Wage a Furious Finish

• Marie Magarshack won the F65-69 race in 2:02:28 (9:21/mi), finishing more than 50 minutes clear of the field.
• Varetta Mayes (2:52:34) edged Susan Levenson (2:52:37) for 2nd — three seconds after 13 miles, with Levenson running the faster 2M→4M split of the two.
• Carol Culver (3:15:17, 14:54/mi) held 4th, with Kim Nguyen (3:17:51, 15:06/mi) finishing 5th — separated by just over two and a half minutes.
• Seven women finished the F65-69 race in breezy, humid conditions along the San Francisco waterfront.

Marie Magarshack, 65, from Biviers, turned this into a wire-to-wire statement. Running 9:21 per mile through the fog and 17-mph wind, she steadily climbed the women's field from 558th at the 2-mile mark all the way to 412th by the finish — a relentless, methodical advance. Her 293rd-fastest women's split on the 10M→12M stretch shows she wasn't coasting at the end either. Her winning margin of more than 50 minutes over the rest of the F65-69 field was as decisive as it gets.

Behind her, the real drama belonged to Varetta Mayes and Susan Levenson. Levenson, 66, of Phoenix, actually ran the stronger early miles — her 2M→4M split was the faster of the two — but she faded through the back half, sliding from 1,307th among women at the 4-mile mark to 1,483rd by the finish. Mayes, 68, of San Francisco, faded too, dropping to 1,482nd among women, but just barely held on. Three seconds at the line — 2:52:34 to 2:52:37 — is the margin that separated 2nd from 3rd after 13.1 miles of Levenson making up ground and Mayes refusing to yield it entirely.

Carol Culver, 66, of Santa Fe, was the model of consistency in 4th — her women's field position barely shifted across the entire race, hovering in the mid-1,660s from mile 4 through the finish at 3:15:17. Kim Nguyen, 65, of San Jose, ran 5th in 3:17:51, posting the 1,405th-fastest women's split on the 12M→Finish stretch as she closed out her race. Lupe Clapp, 69, of San Gabriel, crossed 6th in 3:22:07, and Venetia Louie-Chee, 68, of Arcadia, rounded out the seven-woman field in 3:35:32 — completing the F65-69 race at 16:26 per mile on a challenging, windy course.