M65-69 at Chicago 13.1: Tiggs Takes the Win in a Sharp Battle at the Front

• Nathan Tiggs won the M65-69 group in 1:38:31 (7:31/mi), holding off JP Himmelberg by 33 seconds.
• The top two finished under 1:40 — a full 3:36 ahead of third-place Rainer Schochat's 1:42:07.
• Schochat was the strongest finisher in the back half of the race, climbing steadily through the men's field on the 15K-to-finish stretch.
• A field of 39 finishers spread across nearly 42 minutes from first to 20th place alone.

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Nathan Tiggs ran a controlled, efficient race to claim the M65-69 title in 1:38:31 — a 7:31/mi pace that put real daylight between him and the rest of the group. JP Himmelberg of Chicago pushed him hard through the middle miles, but Tiggs found another gear after 10K. His strongest relative segment came between 8K and 10K, where he posted one of the sharper splits in the broader field, and he never relinquished the lead from there.

Himmelberg was no pushover — his 1:39:04 (7:33/mi) was a genuinely strong effort, and the 33-second gap between first and second tells you this was a real race at the front. Both men finished well clear of Rainer Schochat, who crossed in 1:42:07. Schochat's story was one of patient progression: he was climbing through the men's field from the gun and delivered his best relative split on the final 15K-to-finish segment, suggesting he saved something for the close.

Fourth and fifth were tightly matched. David Ioder (1:45:51, 8:04/mi) and Cesar Gamez (1:46:54, 8:09/mi) were separated by just over a minute, with Gamez — like Tiggs — showing a strong 8K-to-10K segment. Rich Zappen, Ruben Sanchez, and Richard Klotz then bunched between 1:50:23 and 1:52:32, making for a competitive mid-pack across the M65-69 group on a pleasant 60°F Chicago morning.