Women's Marathon: Boutin Breaks Clear Early and Never Looks Back

• Rozlyn Boutin, 31, of Vancouver, BC won the women's race in 2:46:57 (6:22/mi), moving to the front by the second checkpoint and holding the lead through every split to the finish.
• Carly Bandt (2:53:03) and Emily Field (2:53:15) battled to 2nd and 3rd — separated by just 15 seconds after 26.2 miles, with Field posting the 2nd-fastest women's split on the 14.95–18 Mile stretch to close the gap late.
• Madeleine Nakada ran as high as 2nd through the middle miles but faded to 5th (2:55:16), while Carly Bandt climbed from 6th place at the halfway point to claim the runner-up spot with the 3rd-fastest women's split on the Garmin Hill Challenge segment.
• Diona Fulton, 45, of Santa Barbara finished 17th among women in 3:17:06 (7:31/mi) — the standout veteran performance in the top 20 of a 1,878-woman field.

Rozlyn Boutin owned this race from nearly the first mile. She entered the second checkpoint already in 2nd place, then seized the lead and never relinquished it — running every subsequent split in position one and crossing in 2:46:57, a 6:22/mi average that put nearly six minutes of clear air between her and the rest of the women's field. Her 2nd-fastest women's split on the opening 1.81–5.55 Mile stretch signaled her intentions early, and the field never had an answer.

Behind Boutin, the real drama was a slow-burn chase. Rocky Lynne Seeley (4th, 2:54:35) and Nakada ran near the front through the first half, but it was Bandt and Field who finished strongest. Bandt, starting the race in 6th, methodically picked her way through the field — logging the 3rd-fastest women's split on the Garmin Hill Challenge segment — to claim 2nd in 2:53:03. Field, 23, from Walnut Creek, was even more aggressive in the final stretch, posting the 2nd-fastest women's split from 14.95 to 18 Miles to lock in 3rd at 2:53:18. The gap between them at the tape: 15 seconds after more than two and a half hours of racing.

Nakada's fade from 2nd to 5th (2:55:16) and Seeley's slide from 2nd to 4th (2:54:35) tell the story of a race where the back half separated the contenders. Sylvie Abel rounded out the top six in 2:59:17, and Liv Paxton (7th, 3:02:03) led a cluster of four women between 3:02 and 3:03:49 — Tanner, Xu, and Davil — in one of the tighter mid-pack battles of the day. Among the top 20, Fulton's 17th-place finish at 45 years old stood out as a performance worth noting in a field of 1,878.