Shamrock 8K F35-39: Floris Flies to the Win in 29:28

• Lauren Floris took the F35-39 title in 29:28 (5:56/mi), posting the 3rd-fastest women's split on the 2M→4M segment and holding 3rd among all women from start to finish.
• Emily Honeycutt ran 30:54 to claim 2nd — and backed up her 5th-place finish here in 2025 (31:06) with a 12-second improvement this year.
• Bailey Wilson crossed 3rd in 31:19, also improving on her 2025 result (6th, 32:21) — a 62-second drop that signals a genuine step forward.
• The top three finished within 1:51 of each other, while 4th through 8th spanned a wider 1:53 gap — the race was decided up front.

Lauren Floris wasted no time asserting herself on a cool, breezy Virginia Beach morning. The 35-year-old from Oak Park, CA sat 3rd among all women at every checkpoint and never wavered, averaging 5:56 per mile for the full 8K. Her 2M→4M split was the 3rd-fastest among women in the field — a mid-race surge that made the outcome look inevitable by the time she hit the final stretch.

Behind her, the battle for 2nd and 3rd had a compelling subplot: both Emily Honeycutt and Bailey Wilson were returning to this exact race with unfinished business. Honeycutt, racing in her own backyard from Newport News, trimmed 12 seconds off her 2025 time to finish in 30:54 — a clean, confident improvement. Wilson went further, slashing more than a minute off her prior result to cross in 31:19. Both also posted among the seven fastest women's splits on the 2M→4M stretch, so neither was coasting to the line.

Further back, the race sorting was intriguing. Marie Williams (5th, 34:00) and Megan Tschirhart-Bell (7th, 34:41) were separated by 41 seconds at the finish, but Elise Mclawhorn (4th, 35:48) had started the race near 31st among women and charged all the way to 24th by the finish — her 16th-fastest women's split on the middle segment the engine behind that climb. In a field of 571, the stories ran deep well past the podium.