Masters Men at CIM 2024: Simpson Runs Away with It

• Jason Simpson (Boulder, CO, age 40) won the Masters Men race in 2:24:45 — a 5:31/mi pace that put him more than 3 minutes clear of runner-up Korey Larson.
• The top-5 was separated by just 7 minutes across 2,225 finishers, with four of the five podium spots taken by 40-year-olds.
• Sanjay Rawal (age 50, Jamaica, NY) was the standout age outlier, finishing 6th in 2:32:56 — running 5:50/mi to outpace a field full of men a decade younger.
• John Damen and Pedro Aquino both clocked 2:35:21 — same time on the display, different places (16th and 17th), settled by the timing system's finer resolution.

Jason Simpson made a statement at CIM. The Boulder-based 40-year-old came through the back half of the race in increasingly dominant fashion, climbing from 70th among men at the 10K checkpoint all the way to 57th by the finish — a steady, relentless move through the field that reflected his 5:31/mi average. That kind of negative-split aggression over 26.2 miles is hard to fake, and the 2:24:45 on the clock backed it up.

Behind him, Korey Larson (Norman, OK) ran a strong 2:27:57 to claim second, with his best work coming late — he posted the 57th-fastest split in the field on the final 40K-to-finish stretch, moving from 95th to 87th among men in the closing stages. Corey Baxter (Fairfield, CA) rounded out the podium in 2:30:14, having climbed steadily from 132nd among men at the 10K mark to 103rd by the half before settling into 3rd. Tim Comay and Ben Keck filled out the top five at 2:30:48 and 2:31:45 respectively, both running remarkably consistent races through the mild Sacramento morning.

The depth of this field was something else. With 2,225 finishers in the Masters Men race, the competition stretched far beyond the podium — and the presence of Sanjay Rawal at 6th overall in the Masters Men standings deserves a second look. At 50 years old, running 5:50/mi for a 2:32:56 finish, Rawal outran a field of athletes mostly a decade his junior. That's not a footnote; that's the subplot of the day.