M45-49: Jeremy Drowne Runs Away from a 372-Man Field

• Jeremy Drowne, 52:59 (5:41/mi) — wins M45-49 by 2:26 over runner-up Chip Ohara, a commanding margin at the front.
• Chip Ohara (55:25) and Shizhong Yang (56:18) complete the podium, separated by 53 seconds, with a four-man cluster — Varano (57:00), Derocco (57:06), and Misencik (57:19) — chasing hard within 19 seconds of each other for 4th through 6th.
• Drowne's closing surge: he posted the 59th-fastest 10K-to-finish split among all men, pulling from 112th place in the men's field at the 10K to 70th by the line — a decisive second-half push.
• 372 finishers completed M45-49 on a humid Utica morning — 64°F but 82% humidity making every sub-6:00 mile earned.

Jeremy Drowne, 48, of West Chazy, NY, didn't just win M45-49 — he dismantled the field. His 5:41/mi average was a full 16 seconds per mile faster than runner-up Chip Ohara's 5:57 clip, and the numbers tell an even richer story: Drowne was already charging through the men's field before the 10K mark, sitting 112th among men at that point, then unleashing a 59th-fastest closing split to rocket to 70th overall among men at the finish. That's not a comfortable jog to the tape — that's a race within a race.

Ohara, 45, out of Auburn, crossed in 55:25 to claim second, while Syracuse's Shizhong Yang (also 45) held third in 56:18. Both men made significant moves through the second half — Ohara's 111th-fastest men's split on the 5K-to-10K segment and Yang's 119th-fastest on the same stretch show two athletes who found another gear mid-race, catching and passing dozens of rivals. Ohara faded slightly relative to that mid-race pace coming home, while Yang did too, but both locked up their podium spots with authority.

The battle for fourth was genuinely gripping. Jordan Varano (47, Binghamton) edged Vincent Derocco (46, Leesburg, VA) by just six seconds — 57:00 to 57:06 — with Randy Misencik (57:19) another 13 seconds back in sixth. Varano posted the 157th-fastest men's closing split to hold off Derocco, who ran the 163rd-fastest second-half split; Derocco made up ground but not quite enough. Kyle Mahoney (57:41, 7th) and Kees Keizer (58:04, 8th) rounded out a strong top eight, all finishing inside 6:15/mi pace on a morning where the humidity had plenty to say about the effort required.