Barks & Brews 5K — M1-12: Leon Flesher leads a dominant Flesher family sweep

• Leon Flesher, age 12, wins in 17:32 — a 5:39/mi clip that left the rest of the M1-12 field nearly two and a half minutes behind.
• Three Fleshers on the podium: Leon (1st), Atticus (3rd, age 9), and Elliot (7th, age 6) all crossed under the Flesher banner — with Sawyer Brudz splitting them in 2nd.
• Closest finish of the day: Rory Robinson (8th, 26:28.85), Thomas Glidewell (9th, 26:28.86), and Milo van Houtryve (10th, 26:28.86) were separated by just hundredths of a second across three places.
• 31 finishers completed the M1-12 race on a warm Sacramento morning — 73°F and clear skies for every one of them.

Leon Flesher made this one look easy. The 12-year-old from Sacramento ran a 5:39/mi average to finish in 17:32, a margin so commanding that second place didn't arrive until nearly 2:27 later. He also moved through the men's field as the race wore on, climbing from 9th to 7th among the men between the 1-mile mark and the finish — posting the 8th-fastest split on that closing stretch in the men's field.

Sawyer Brudz held off a determined Atticus Flesher for the silver spot, but it was razor-thin: Brudz crossed in 19:59, Atticus in 20:00 — one second apart. Atticus, just nine years old, ran 6:27/mi to nearly catch his older competitor in the final stretch. Cody Skibby and Nicholas Rogers rounded out the top five, both age 12, with Rogers finishing in 23:05 before Marco Becerril and the remarkable Elliot Flesher — six years old — came through in 23:39.

The most dramatic moment of the race unfolded around the 8th-through-10th spots. Rory Robinson, Thomas Glidewell, and Milo van Houtryve crossed in a cluster so tight that all three registered 26:28 on the clock — yet timing chips separated them by a single hundredth of a second each. Robinson edged Glidewell by 0.01 seconds; Glidewell and van Houtryve shared the same hundredth. Three kids, one finish line, a blink between them.