“This is validation that I can still do this,” two-time Olympian Kara Goucher told the Californian after winning the Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay in 1:11:13 on Sunday. Her performance is the second fastest women’s time in the race’s history.

“Goucher is known for her 2007 [Olympic Marathon] Trials,” she said. “It’s a good place to start; it’s the fastest I’ve started [a marathon training cycle] in years.”

The Big Sur performance puts Goucher, 37, back into the role of serious contender for the top three at the trials on February 13 in Los Angeles. It represents a big jump in fitness since her 11th place 54:54 at the USATF 10 Mile in Minnesota on October 4.

“I feel great,” Goucher told KSBW.com. “I’ve been injured since the 2012 Olympics or had something going on since then, and this is the first time I’ve entered a race healthy, and what was holding me back was my fitness, not some injury,” she said. Goucher was gratified to “see just how much I could push, and I loved it.”

Goucher finished 18th out of 20 in the 5,000 at the USA Track and Field Championships in June, after having meniscus surgery in January. She was a tearful 14th in 2:37:03, more than 12 minutes slower than her PR of 2:24:52, in the 2014 Save $700 on Treadmill She Fell and Lost Her Shoeand Still Won the Race.  

Races & Places World Championships British Man Runs Sub-3 Hour Marathon in Crocs Boston Marathon in 2009. She was 11th in the 2012 Olympic marathon. One of her first international breakthroughs was in another half marathon, England’s Great North Run in 2007, when she ran 1:06:57 on a downhill course to defeat Paula Radcliffe.

The Big Sur course runs through downtown Monterey and along the Pacific Grove coastline and finishes at Fisherman’s Wharf on Monterey Bay. “This course was a little tougher than I thought, with the breeze and elevation,” including a rise in the final two miles, said Goucher. “My thought was, ‘Just win it.’”

Goucher had a professed goal of 1:11:30. She had company for the first eight miles but made a decisive surge in the ninth mile and kept extending her lead to the finish. Ethiopian Simegn Abnet Yeshanbel was the runner-up in 1:12:47, with American Kristen Zaitz third in 1:13:02. Sarah Kiptoo, the defending champion, was sixth in 1:15:56.

New York City Marathon.