Veronica Graziano had won her first Maine women’s title at the Beach to Beacon 10K. And she had no idea.

It wasn’t until hours after she crossed the finish line, after she had already returned home to Falmouth, that the 37-year-old was notified by a friend that she had been announced as the state’s champion.

“I was super pumped,” Graziano said. “I love this race. … It’s fun to be able to add my name to the top there.”

According to the unofficial results, Graziano finished in 35 minutes and 51 seconds, just ahead of Cumberland’s Alexis Wilbert (36:02) and defending champion Ruth White of Orono (36:06), Phoebe Colvin Oehmig of Brunswick (36:39) and Christina Berkow of Falmouth (36:59) rounded out the top five.

“I didn’t know if that would ever be a title I could hold,” said Graziano, who moved to Maine from New Hampshire in July of 2020. “I don’t know how many more years I could fend off these young kids. … Things came together today in a way that are never guaranteed.”

For much of the day, confusion reigned in the Maine women’s results, which initially had 12 minutes tacked on to the times of runners who were entered in the elite field that started at 9 a.m. but instead started with the main field at 9:12 a.m. As a result, the initial results indicated an inaccurate top of the leaderboard.

Race director Dave McGillivray said it isn’t unusual for results to change as issues are sorted out after the finish.

“That’s why we typically don’t like to release results until we get a bunch of eyeballs on it and say ‘Does this look right?’ If it doesn’t, then we have to ask questions, why isn’t it correct?'” he said. “So-and-so wore someone else’s bib number, or someone started in a division they weren’t supposed to, whatever it might be.

“In as much as one would think it’s kind of simple, like first, second and third, what’s the big deal, there are complications to it all.”

Graziano was under the impression that she finished second behind Houlton’s Teanne Ewings, who started with the elite runners. Nearly two hours after the race, however, Graziano was listed as having a time of just under 48 minutes, prompting a nervous email from her coach, Terry Shea.

“(He said) ‘I’m so sorry, something bad must have happened,'” said Graziano, who was told around 2 p.m. that she had won. “‘I hope you’re not hurt, I hope you’re not really sick, I know you’re excited for this race.’ I was like ‘What is he talking about? It wasn’t that bad!'”

Graziano was gone by the time the results were announced at the awards ceremony, though she said she likely would have left quickly after the race even if she knew she had won.

“I have two toddlers … so I get out of a race as fast as I can to get home and get right into mom mode,” she said. “They don’t care if I won or not. … I think even if I knew I had won, I probably would have jetted out of there.”

Graziano said her distance running background helped her deal with conditions that went from the blistering heat of the previous two days to an early downpour Saturday, and then muggy humidity during the race.

“I’m a marathoner at heart, and I think tougher conditions benefit that type of mindset, just blocking out the elements and the heat,” she said.

Without knowing what was going on with any Maine women who might have started with the elite field, Graziano says she raced for the win, using Wilbert as a reference point to determine where she needed to be at the front of the pack.

“I was going for place,” she said. “I wanted to keep the top Maine women in my view or be the top Maine woman in the open field, and key off of that. So Alexis and I keyed together for about two miles, and then I said, ‘You don’t know how the pro field went out, so you’ve just got to keep going.'”

Wilbert’s time was 16 seconds slower than her runner-up result last year, but was still impressive considering that she has been recovering from a stress fractures in her left foot in April.

“I should be happy with how it turned out. I wasn’t able to walk in April,” said Wilbert, 39. “I’m trying to remind myself to be happy that, eight weeks later, I’m here. … I’m just so competitive with myself that, if it’s not what I was hoping for, even if it’s a lofty goal, it’s a little disappointing.”

White, who’s headed to the University of New Hampshire after a superb high school career at Orono, said the Beach to Beacon was her first race since the end of the high school track and field season.

“It was fun to race again. … It was cool to see people that I knew,” said White, who has been focusing her summer on training instead of competing. “I think the hardest part is the mental part of it, getting back into the mental side of racing. How to do a track race is very different than a big road race like this. But I like the environment of a lot of people at a big race.”

Colvin Oehmig, a Brunswick native and Waynflete School graduate, lived in Colorado for about a year after graduating from Middlebury College and most recently has been a doctoral student at Dartmouth, where she has trained with 2016 Beach to Beacon champion Ben True. She said she benefited from both altitude training and sauna sessions that have helped her acclimate to humidity.

“I was so not expecting this. I’ve had a really good month of training,” she said. “I was definitely worried about moving back to sea level, given that I was going to be losing that altitude advantage. But again, doing the steam room training is supposed to be equivalent to altitude training. … And being in these New England conditions helps.”