Shamrock Half Marathon F70-74: Mary Fout Runs Away With It

• Mary Fout won the F70-74 age group in 2:23:23 (10:56/mi), finishing more than 6.5 minutes clear of runner-up Patty Hoag.
• Patty Hoag held 2nd in 2:29:59, with Betesu Williams and Ann Marie Keim separated by just 2:29 across 3rd and 4th.
• Ann Marie Keim was the only finisher to lose significant ground through the race, sliding from an early position well inside the top 2,000 women to 2,358th by the finish — a notable fade in the heat.
• All 16 women in the age group finished, spanning a range from Fout's 2:23:23 to Vicky Eisenhut's 4:09:06 — a spread of over 1 hour 45 minutes.

Mary Fout made this one look controlled from the start. The 71-year-old from Williamsburg steadily moved through the women's field — from 1,589th among women at the 5K to 1,473rd by the 15K mark — and her strongest relative moment came on the 10K-to-15K segment, where she posted the 1,388th-fastest women's split of that stretch. In 71°F heat with a stiff 17 mph wind and thick humidity, running 10:56 per mile for 13.1 miles is a serious effort, and she never let the race come back to her.

Patty Hoag, also 71, was the clearest challenger, progressively climbing through the women's field all the way to the finish — a sign she ran a smart, even race. Betesu Williams did the same in 3rd, improving her women's standing at every checkpoint through 20K before a slight drift in the final stretch. Those two were separated by nearly 16 minutes, so the podium was never really in doubt after the midpoint.

The most dramatic arc belonged to Ann Marie Keim. She came through the opening 5K in solid shape — 1,862nd among women — but by the 5K-to-10K segment she was fading, and she continued to drop through the field at every checkpoint, finishing 2,358th among women. In conditions like these, going out too hard has consequences, and Keim's race illustrated exactly that.

Behind the top five, the rest of the F70-74 field spread out across a wide range of times, with Roxanne Kaylor at 74 the oldest finisher in the group and one of six women who crossed between 2:54 and 3:05. Every one of the 16 starters made it to the finish line — no small thing on a warm, windy Virginia Beach morning.