Men's Race: Reed Fischer Wires It from Start to Finish

• Fischer wins in 1:03:02 (4:49/mi), leading the men's field from the opening checkpoint through the tape — never surrendering the top spot.
• Connor Winter closes to 37 seconds back (1:03:39), climbing from 5th at the first checkpoint to 2nd by 8K and holding it to the finish.
• Colin Mickow (1:04:32) returns to the podium — he ran 1:02:36 for 2nd here in 2022, and while that prior effort was faster, he still claimed 3rd in 2023 with a strong 10K–15K segment.
• The top five are separated by just 2:48, with Brogan Austin rounding out the group in 5th at 1:05:50 (5:01/mi).

Reed Fischer made this look simple, and the splits say it wasn't luck. He held the men's lead at every single checkpoint — 1st at 5K, 1st at 8K, 1st at 10K, 1st at 15K — and posted the fastest men's split on the 5K–8K stretch to underline his authority. His 4:49/mi average across 13.1 miles on a warm 72°F Chicago morning was the benchmark nobody could touch.

The most compelling movement behind him belonged to Connor Winter. Starting the race back in 5th, Winter ran the second-fastest men's split on the 5K–8K segment — matching Fischer's surge in that stretch — and vaulted into 2nd by 8K, where he stayed for the rest of the race. His 1:03:39 finish (4:51/mi) was a genuine chase, but Fischer had already built enough of a cushion that Winter's climb ended 37 seconds short.

David Bett had the most volatile race among the top five. He opened in 2nd, slipped to 4th, recovered to 3rd by 10K, then settled back to 4th by the finish in 1:05:09. His 3rd-fastest men's split on the 8K–10K segment shows he had pace to burn in the middle miles — just not enough to hold the podium against Colin Mickow, who was steady all day and earned 3rd in 1:04:32. For Mickow, it's a bittersweet return: he stood on this same podium in 2022 in a faster time, but a podium is a podium, and he backed it up a year later.

Behind the top five, the battle for places 6 through 14 was tight and competitive across a men's field of 3,207 finishers. Aaron Templeton (6th, 1:07:11) and Mitchell Baum (7th, 1:07:26) were separated by just 15 seconds, while Christopher May (10th, 1:09:25), Jack Whetstone (11th, 1:09:28), and Connor Mora (12th, 1:09:30) finished within five seconds of each other — three men, five seconds, in the middle of a 3,200-deep field.