M30-34: Garrett Patrick Surges from Seventh to Take the Title

• Garrett Patrick won M30-34 in 2:26:25 (5:35/mi), posting the fastest men's split on the 6M→8M segment and climbing from 7th to 1st among men in the back half of the race.
• Tie Zheng and Gabriel Kaufman finished 2nd and 3rd in 2:35:06 and 2:35:40 — just 34 seconds apart — after running very different second halves: Kaufman faded from 4th to 9th among men while Zheng steadily climbed from 14th to 6th.
• Brian Learn (6th, 2:46:23) and Jason Yen (7th, 2:46:29) were separated by just six seconds at the line in a field of 1,040.
• Matthew Benson (15th, 2:58:52) and Sam Scaife (16th, 2:58:52) crossed in the same displayed time, with Benson edging Scaife by the slimmest of margins.

Garrett Patrick didn't just win M30-34 — he hunted it down. Running out of Daly City, the 33-year-old was sitting 7th among all men through the early miles, a solid but unremarkable position in a deep field. Then came the 6M→8M stretch, where Patrick posted the fastest men's split in the entire race on that segment, and everything changed. By mile 8 he had vaulted to 2nd among men, and he never looked back, crossing in 2:26:25 at a 5:35/mi clip — a pace that would have been competitive with the men's overall winners from 2023 and 2025.

The battle for the podium behind him told two very different stories. Gabriel Kaufman, a San Francisco local, had been flying — sitting 4th among men by the 8-mile mark, and posting the 2nd-fastest men's split on that same 6M→8M segment where Patrick was doing his damage. But Kaufman faded through the second half, sliding to 9th among men before holding on for 3rd in M30-34 at 2:35:40. Tie Zheng, meanwhile, did the opposite: the Palo Alto runner was still 13th among men at the 8-mile mark but kept grinding, running the 5th-fastest men's split on the 8M→9.6M segment and ultimately finishing 2nd in 2:35:06. The 34-second gap between them at the line masked just how different their trajectories were.

Further back, the race served up some tight finishes in the cool, breezy San Francisco morning. Learn and Yen — both 32, both at 6:21/mi — were separated by just six seconds after 26.2 miles. And Benson and Scaife, the 15th and 16th finishers, were clocked at the identical displayed time of 2:58:52, with only the timing chip telling them apart.