Two Cities 5K: Kirk edges Curiel in a razor-thin F35-39 battle

• Kelly Kirk wins in 26:00 (8:22/mi), holding off Yokie Curiel by just five seconds in the closest contest at the top of the F35-39 field.
• Bailey Balbach rounds out the podium in 26:36 — 31 seconds back from Curiel but a clear 2:51 ahead of 4th place.
• The top three finished within 36 seconds of each other, while the gap from 3rd to 4th (Yolanda Jacuinde Lujano, 29:27) stretched to nearly three minutes.
• 61 women finished in the F35-39 age group, with times spanning from Kirk's 26:00 to the back of a deep field.

Kelly Kirk, 39, from Chowchilla, made every second count on a warm November morning in Fresno — 74°F and clear skies don't exactly invite fast times, which makes her 8:22/mi pace all the more impressive. Yokie Curiel of Fresno pushed her every step of the way, crossing in 26:05, and on a different day five seconds might have gone either direction. This was a genuine race to the line.

Bailey Balbach, the youngest on the podium at 35, came home in 26:36 to claim 3rd. Her finish effectively closed the door on the rest of the field — Yolanda Jacuinde Lujano ran a solid 29:27 in 4th, but that gap of 2:51 to Balbach tells you the podium was its own race within a race. Rebecca Mayo (29:38) finished just 11 seconds behind Lujano in 5th, the second-tightest margin of the day.

Further back, Michele Martinez (30:35), Claudia Garcia (31:15), and Tiffany High (32:13) kept the competitive pressure alive through the 6th-through-8th spots, each separated by less than a minute. Heather Brewer rounded out the top ten in 33:15. With 61 finishers spread across the age group, the F35-39 field showed both depth and range — and at the front, a five-second thriller worth remembering.