Shamrock 8K F60-64: Barrick Dominates in Virginia Beach

• Michelle Barrick won the F60-64 race in 42:46 (8:36/mi), finishing more than 3 minutes ahead of the next finisher.
• Susan Sheets (45:37) edged Andrea Clappsy (45:56) for 2nd, closing with the 125th-fastest women's split on the final stretch to leapfrog her rival.
• Maureen Ventrice (47:03, 5th) faded through the back half — dropping from 147th among women to 192nd — while Andrea Clappsy made the opposite move, climbing from 228th to 161st among women by the finish.
• 248 women ran the F60-64 race on a cool, breezy Virginia Beach morning — 53°F with a 10 mph wind off the coast.

Michelle Barrick made this one look straightforward. The 62-year-old from Cape Coral ran 8:36/mi through the Virginia Beach streets and was never seriously threatened, building a lead that held all the way to the tape. She even posted the 132nd-fastest women's split on the 2M–4M stretch — not the flashiest number, but part of a steady, controlled effort that produced a winning margin of over three minutes. By the finish, she had climbed from 116th among women at the first checkpoint all the way to 103rd — a quiet, efficient piece of racing.

Behind her, the battle for 2nd and 3rd was a genuine cat-and-mouse affair. Susan Sheets of Virginia Beach ran 45:37 at a 9:11/mi clip and posted the 125th-fastest women's split on the 4M-to-finish segment — a strong close that locked up 2nd. Andrea Clappsy of Chester, MD was the race's biggest mover, surging from 228th among women early on all the way to 161st by the finish, and her 136th-fastest women's split on the second half nearly closed the gap — but Sheets had just enough cushion, with 19 seconds separating them at the line.

Fifth-place Maureen Ventrice (47:03) tells the flip side of that story. She was running comfortably inside the top 150 women through the first checkpoint before fading to 192nd by the finish — a reminder that 10 mph of wind and 78% humidity can make the back half of an 8K feel very different from the first. Robin Stolz rounded out the top four in 49:40, and Terri Lodge (52:24), Susannah Baden (52:50), and Sue Passetti (53:41) filled out the next tier in a field that stretched 248 finishers deep.