M40-44: Steven Otal Runs Away With It in Cleveland's Heat

• Otal wins in 2:47:52 — a 6:24/mi clip that put more than 10 minutes between him and runner-up Matt Treblas (2:58:37).
• Treblas was the day's great mover, climbing from 99th among men at the first checkpoint all the way to 37th by the finish — a gain of 62 places in the men's field.
• Top five separated by just 17:21, with four men — Treblas through Mordy Osina — finishing within 6:36 of each other after Otal had long gone.
• Osina ran the opposite arc to Treblas: starting 36th among men, he drifted back to 77th by the 19.1-mile mark before recovering to 51st at the line.

In a 75°F morning with 68% humidity — genuinely taxing conditions for a marathon — Steven Otal of Levallois-Perret was simply in a different race. He crossed in 2:47:52, averaging 6:24 per mile, and spent the entire day climbing through the men's field: 24th among men at the first checkpoint, steadily working to 18th by the finish. His 19.1-to-22.5-mile split ranked 16th-fastest in the men's field on that stretch, suggesting he was still pushing hard deep into the race when others were fading.

Behind him, the real drama was Matt Treblas running one of the more impressive second-half charges in the M40-44 group. The Aurora, OH native was buried 99th among men early on, but his 22.5-mile-to-finish split ranked 22nd-fastest in the men's field — and he kept passing people all the way to the tape, finishing 2:58:37 for 2nd. Eric Hammond (3:02:16) and Mark Majewski (3:04:11) rounded out the podium, with Hammond posting the 35th-fastest men's split in the 19.1–22.5-mile segment and Majewski surging late with the 34th-fastest closing split in the men's field.

Majewski's race told its own story: he ran as high as 45th among men at the halfway point before slipping back to 69th at 19.1 miles, then rallied to 47th at the finish — a slide-and-recover arc that landed him 4th in M40-44 by just under two minutes over Osina. Osina himself went the other direction, starting aggressively (36th among men) before fading through the back half, though his 5K-to-10K split still ranked 45th-fastest in the men's field. In a field of 134 M40-44 finishers on a warm Cleveland morning, it was Otal's day from start to finish — and it wasn't particularly close.