Two Cities Marathon 5K — F60-64: West edges Larmer in a four-second thriller

• Andrea West, 61, wins F60-64 in 34:04 (10:58/mi), holding off Susan Larmer by just four seconds.
• Leesa Tyrrell takes third in 35:50, running 1:42 back of Larmer — a comfortable cushion to the podium but well clear of fourth.
• Arlene Nishimura rounds out the top four in 38:02, the last finisher under 40 minutes in a 19-woman field.
• Karen Prudek and Angelica Osmer battle through the back half of the top six, separated by only 29 seconds at 40:58 and 41:27 respectively.

Andrea West of Clovis and Susan Larmer of Fresno turned the F60-64 age group into a genuine race-within-a-race. Both women ran at essentially identical pace — 10:58 and 10:59 per mile — and the four seconds between them at the finish line is as close as a 5K result gets without a photo. West, 61, takes the win, but Larmer, 62, made her earn every step of it.

Leesa Tyrrell, 63, secured third in 35:50, running a composed 11:32 pace to finish a minute and forty-two seconds behind Larmer — close enough to the podium conversation but never truly threatened from behind. Arlene Nishimura, 64, was the last woman to break 40 minutes, crossing in 38:02 to claim fourth. The gap between Nishimura and fifth-place Karen Prudek (40:58) is nearly three minutes, making the top four a distinct cluster within the field.

The middle of the field told its own story. Prudek and Angelica Osmer (41:27) were separated by just 29 seconds through sixth place, while a notable gap opened before Huiwen Hao arrived in seventh at 49:38. From there, the remaining 13 finishers spread across a wide range — Michele Schneider and Karen Cook finishing back-to-back in 11th and 12th at 55:46 and 55:47, a single second apart — before the field stretched all the way to Kim Cunningham's 1:18:26 in 19th. All 19 women finished, and on a warm November morning in Fresno, that counts for plenty.