Broken Arrow 18K M60-69: Willey Holds Off Weber in a Battle of Bay Area Veterans

• Mike Willey wins in 2:40:01 (14:18/mi avg), finishing 2 minutes 18 seconds ahead of runner-up Paul Weber — tight enough to keep the pressure on all the way to Palisades.
• Top three separated by just 4:30 across a high-altitude course topping out near 8,820 ft — Willey, Weber, and Gary Deacon ran remarkably close for most of the race.
• Weber's strongest segment came on the KT 22→Siberia stretch, where he posted the 49th-fastest split among the women's field — the sharpest individual split among the top three on that leg.
• Jeremiah Valenzuela completed the course in 5:33:48, more than two hours behind Willey — a testament to what it takes simply to finish 18K of Tahoe skyrunning at altitude.

Mike Willey's 2:40:01 was a controlled, composed effort across a course that climbs and descends through thin Sierra Nevada air between 6,200 and 8,820 feet. The Novato native averaged 14:18 per mile — honest work on terrain that punishes anyone who goes out too hard. His gender-place progression told the real story of his race: after hovering around 72nd–74th in the early miles, he steadily climbed through the field, reaching 57th among all men by the finish. That kind of late-race forward movement on a course this demanding doesn't happen by accident.

Paul Weber of Petaluma made things interesting. He was actually moving faster through the mid-race checkpoints — surging from 71st to 54th among men between the early and middle segments — and his KT 22→Siberia split was his calling card, the sharpest of any top-three finisher on that leg. But the back half of the course told a different story: Weber slipped back to 62nd among men at the finish, suggesting the mid-race push came at a cost. He crossed in 2:42:19, 2:18 behind Willey. Gary Deacon of Sonora rounded out the podium in 2:44:31, remarkably consistent throughout — his gender place barely moved across all five checkpoints, a sign of steady, measured effort.

Behind the podium, Dale Hall and Kurt Meyer finished 4th and 5th but ran a decidedly different race, coming in at 3:12:48 and 3:38:00 respectively — a gap of nearly 28 minutes to Hall from Deacon that shows how sharply the field separated after three. At the back, Jeremiah Valenzuela's 5:33:48 closing the field deserves its own acknowledgment: finishing this course at any pace, at elevation, in the heat of a June afternoon, is no small thing for a 67-year-old from Mesa.