M20-24: Joseph Kelly Runs Away With It in Cleveland

• Joseph Kelly won the M20-24 age group in 35:42 at a 5:45/mi clip — nearly 4 minutes clear of runner-up Andrew Lescsak (39:28).
• The gap from 1st to 3rd spanned 5:45, while places 8 through 10 were separated by just 2 seconds across three finishers.
• 37 men aged 20–24 finished on a humid Cleveland morning — 67°F, 83% humidity, and a 15 mph wind making nothing easy.

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Joseph Kelly didn't just win the M20-24 age group — he dominated it. The 23-year-old from Lakewood, OH crossed in 35:42, running 5:45 per mile in conditions that were doing nobody any favors. His margin over second-place Andrew Lescsak was 3 minutes and 46 seconds, a gap that tells you Kelly was essentially racing his own race from the front. Lescsak (39:28, 6:21/mi) held second comfortably, with Owen Pastirik of Broadview Heights rounding out the podium in 41:27.

Behind the podium, the field spread out predictably through the middle — Andrew Schuller (44:31) and Isaiah Dawson (45:57) held 4th and 5th — but the real drama was buried deeper in the results. Timothy Sweeney, Alexander Hackney, and Andrew Hackney finished 8th, 9th, and 10th in a window of just two seconds: 51:44, 51:46, and 51:46. The places are distinct, meaning Sweeney edged the Hackneys by the slimmest of margins, and Alexander just barely held off Andrew in what must have been a frantic final stretch.

With humidity pressing 83% and a stiff wind off the lake, every second earned in this field was hard-won. Kelly's 35:42 stands as the clear headline — a performance that put real daylight between himself and a competitive group of 37 young men. The rest of the M20-24 field fought hard for every position, and the near-dead-heat in the 8-9-10 spots is the kind of finish that makes a race recap worth writing.