San Francisco Marathon F45-49: Curley Claims the Crown in 3:29:26

• Melissa Curley (Truckee, CA, age 46) won the F45-49 race in 3:29:26 (7:59/mi), finishing more than 5½ minutes clear of runner-up Natalie Waite.
• Alicia Rider (Winston-Salem, NC, age 45) delivered the comeback story of the race, surging from outside the top 300 women at the start to finish 4th in F45-49 at 3:40:09 — and she'd already run a 7th-place women's finish in Saturday's 5K, making her weekend a genuine two-race effort.
• The top-10 spans just over 27 minutes, from Curley's 3:29:26 to Huifeichen Chen's 3:56:43, with Jessica Chau (9th, 3:56:24) and Chen separated by only 19 seconds.
• A field of 107 finishers contested F45-49 across a cool, breezy San Francisco morning — 59°F and 15 mph winds off the bay.

Melissa Curley set the tone early. She entered the women's field around 21st overall and held that position through the first few miles, posting the 21st-fastest women's split on the 2M–4M stretch. From there, the race's hills and wind began to sort the field, and Curley gradually ceded ground in the overall women's standings — sliding toward 53rd among women by the finish — but none of that mattered within F45-49, where her 7:59/mi average was in a class of its own. Nobody in the group came close to matching her sustained pace.

Natalie Waite (Thatcher, AZ, age 48) ran a remarkably consistent race, hovering between 75th and 84th among women throughout and finishing 2nd in F45-49 at 3:35:05 (8:12/mi). Her 52nd-fastest women's split on the 9.6M–10.5M segment speaks to a runner who saved something for the middle miles. Shana O'Shea (Oakland, CA, age 48) rounded out the podium in 3:38:47 (8:21/mi), though her trajectory told a different story — she ran as high as 18th among women early before fading to 100th by mid-race, then clawing back to 91st by the finish.

The most dramatic arc belonged to Alicia Rider. Starting deep in the women's field — 308th among women at the first checkpoint — she ran herself all the way to 97th by the finish, including the 36th-fastest women's split on the brutal 20M–22M stretch. That late charge earned her 4th in F45-49 at 3:40:09, capping a weekend in which she'd already placed 7th among women in Saturday's 5K. Judy Chock (San Francisco, CA, 6th, 3:46:34) and Renata Cedzidlo (Wallington, NJ, 7th, 3:49:49) filled out the top seven, with the remainder of the named finishers clustered between 8th-place Jennifer Santillan (3:52:07) and 20th-place Xiaocheng Jing (4:07:52).