F65-69 Marathon: Hennessy leads wire-to-wire in a three-woman battle

• Mary Hennessy won the F65-69 group in 5:26:49 (12:28/mi), holding her position in the women's field from start to finish.
• Jeannette Lambel claimed 2nd in 6:26:04 — nearly an hour back — while Deb Burgess rounded out the trio in 7:40:28.
• The gap from 1st to 3rd spanned 2:13:39, making this a race with clear daylight between all three finishers.
• Hennessy posted the 146th-fastest women's split on the closing 25.2M-to-finish stretch; Lambel was 179th on that same segment, holding her position to the line.

Mary Hennessy never relinquished the lead in the F65-69 group, and her checkpoint-by-checkpoint progression in the women's field tells a disciplined story: she entered the women's standings around 160th place and drifted only slightly through the middle miles before recovering to finish 164th among women — a remarkably steady effort across 26.2 miles at 12:28 per mile on a warm November day in Fresno, with temperatures reaching 74°F.

Jeannette Lambel, racing on home turf in Fresno, settled into a consistent rhythm of her own. Her women's field position barely wavered through the checkpoints — she moved between 189th and 203rd across the race — and she held 2nd in the F65-69 group from beginning to end. At 14:43 per mile, she finished nearly an hour behind Hennessy, but crossed the line with her place secured.

Deb Burgess of Clovis completed the trio, posting a 17:34/mi average en route to a 7:40:28 finish. Her women's field position was similarly stable — hovering around 210th–212th throughout — and she logged the 207th-fastest women's split on the 18M-to-19.8M segment, showing she was still moving through the late miles. All three women finished a full marathon under warm, clear skies — no small feat in the 65-and-older bracket on a November afternoon in the Central Valley.