Broken Arrow Skyrace Ascent — M30-39: Pratt powers to the top

• Andrew Pratt (Boulder, CO, age 30) won M30-39 in 44:49 at a 12:25/mi average — more than a minute clear of 2nd place.
• Carter Shae and Andrew Bachman claimed 2nd and 3rd, separated by 53 seconds, with Bachman posting the 41st-fastest final segment split to Shae's 37th.
• The top-10 window spanned just 5:01 — from Pratt's 44:49 to Jacob Rothman's 49:50 — in a field of 89.
• Blake Herrmann (South Lake Tahoe, CA, age 38) was the oldest man in the top 11, finishing 11th in 50:03.

Andrew Pratt made the M30-39 race look controlled from start to finish. The Boulder native crossed in 44:49 — averaging 12:25 per mile up a course that climbs from roughly 6,257 to 8,845 feet through thin Sierra Nevada air. That's a pace that demands respect at altitude, and Pratt delivered it with authority, finishing over a minute ahead of anyone else in the field.

Behind him, Carter Shae (Leavenworth, WA) and Andrew Bachman (North Bend, WA) ran a tight secondary battle. Shae held 2nd in 45:07, but Bachman was closing on the final KT 22→Finish segment — his split ranked 41st in the field to Shae's 37th, meaning Shae had the stronger close and kept the cushion. The 53-second gap between them was hard-earned. Jonathan Heywood and Justin Savaso rounded out the top five within 11 seconds of each other (47:23 and 47:34), both trading places on the men's leaderboard through the final stretch before Savaso edged back ahead.

The middle of the pack was genuinely competitive. Six runners — from Kameron Harder (6th, 48:24) through Jacob Rothman (10th, 49:50) — finished within 86 seconds of one another, making places 6 through 10 a real race within the race. Harder came in from Flagstaff, AZ, where training at elevation may have offered some advantage on a course that punishes the sea-level crowd. Adam Pacheck making the top 10 from Somerville, MA — well below this course's oxygen demands — was quietly impressive. Eighty-nine men finished M30-39 in total, and with Pratt's winning margin as commanding as it was, the real story on the day was who could chase him down. Nobody could.