M35-39: Damon King Runs Away from a Deep Chicago Field

• King wins in 1:11:12 (5:26/mi), the fastest time in the M35-39 group and more than 1:20 clear of runner-up Andrew Kaehr.
• Ricky Serrano made the biggest move of the top finishers, climbing from 56th to 48th among men across the final stretch with the 41st-fastest 15K-to-finish split in the field.
• Samuel Levon faded late, slipping from 49th to 63rd among men after a strong opening — the sharpest drop of anyone in the top five.
• Ira Ray and Chris Porst finished in identical times of 1:22:20 (6:17/mi), with the final order settled by the timing mat.

Damon King made the M35-39 race look almost straightforward. Running 5:26 per mile through a clear, mild Chicago morning, he steadily worked his way up the men's field — moving from 31st to 28th among men by the finish — and crossed in 1:11:12, a margin that left no suspense at the front. His 10K-to-15K split ranked 24th-fastest in the women's field, a benchmark that underscores just how controlled and sustained his effort was.

Andrew Kaehr held second in 1:12:33, running 5:32/mi and finishing 33rd among men. The gap to Kaehr — 1:21 — was the defining number of the race up front; there was no real chase. Ricky Serrano, however, gave the middle of the race its best subplot. After sitting 56th among men at the 10K mark, he reeled in runners steadily and finished 3rd in M35-39 at 1:15:28, his 15K-to-finish split ranking 41st in the field.

Fourth-place Samuel Levon and fifth-place Matthew Diamond ran almost in lockstep for much of the race, but Levon's late fade told a different story — he dropped from 49th to 63rd among men after the 10K and finished in 1:16:53, while Diamond ran a more consistent 1:17:14. Jonathan Wolf (1:17:24) and Dan Kremske (1:17:34) rounded out a tight cluster from 5th through 7th, separated by just 20 seconds across three spots.

With 809 finishers in the M35-39 group, the depth here was real. The top 20 alone spanned from 1:11 to 1:22 — a spread that reflects how broadly competitive this age group ran across 13.1 miles on a near-perfect Chicago morning.