M40-49 at Broken Arrow Skyrace 46K: Baxter dominates while Zastrow and Odekirk stage a photo-finish duel for second

• Corey Baxter won M40-49 in 5:01:33 (10:33/mi), finishing more than 34 minutes clear of second place — the largest winning margin in the group.
• Zastrow and Odekirk arrived within 8 seconds of each other (5:36:21 vs. 5:36:29), with Zastrow taking second by the slimmest of margins.
• Alex Griffin was the biggest mover of the day, climbing from 90th to 59th among the men across the race's checkpoints — the most dramatic upward surge in the group.
• The field of 20 spanned 97 minutes from first to last, with a tight cluster of five athletes finishing within 46 minutes of each other in places 2–6.

Corey Baxter ran a race in a different class entirely. The 42-year-old from Fairfield, CA, crossed in 5:01:33 — a 10:33/mi average across 46 kilometers of Tahoe high country, with the course ranging up to 8,833 feet above sea level. Where others were grinding through thin air and a cool, wet morning, Baxter was steadily climbing the men's standings from 40th at the first checkpoint all the way to 33rd, where he held firm through the final three splits. His strongest closing segment came on the High Camp 2-to-finish stretch, where he posted the 28th-fastest split in the men's field on that leg.

The real drama in M40-49 was the battle for second. Adam Zastrow (Lafayette, CA, age 46) and Chris Odekirk (Manitou Springs, CO, age 43) ran virtually identical races — 5:36:21 and 5:36:29, separated by just eight seconds after nearly five and a half hours of racing at altitude. Odekirk's strongest moment came on the Village-to-Snow King 2 segment, where he posted the 47th-fastest men's split on that stretch, while Zastrow was sharp on High Camp 1-to-Village. In the end, Zastrow held the edge, but it was as close as it gets without a stopwatch in hand.

Fourth place went to Alex Griffin (Palm Springs, CA, age 42), who ran one of the most compelling positional stories of the day — entering the race's checkpoint sequence 90th among the men and methodically working his way to 59th by the finish. His best segment was KT 2 to Siberia 2, where he put down the 35th-fastest men's split on that stretch. Ryan Hartwig (Twentynine Palms, CA) rounded out the top five in 5:47:53, while Barrett Kaasa — racing on home soil in South Lake Tahoe — took sixth in 5:50:19.