Cleveland 5K: Will Ross Dominates M70-74 in a Field That Went the Distance

• Will Ross wins in 27:44 — an 8:56/mi pace that put more than four minutes of clear air between him and 2nd-place Richard Spademan (31:48).
• Spademan-to-Partezana gap: another seven-plus minutes separated 2nd from 3rd, making the podium a study in tiers.
• 18 M70-74 finishers toed the line on a humid, breezy Cleveland morning — 67°F with 83% humidity and a 15 mph wind off the lake.
• Dennis Fiorilli Sr. (74, Cleveland) closed out the group in 1:09:57, nearly 42 minutes behind Ross — a span that tells you everything about how wide this field ran.

Will Ross came to Cleveland and made the M70-74 race look straightforward. The 70-year-old from Smith Mountain, VA, clicked off 8:56-per-mile splits — a pace that would be tidy in any age group — and crossed in 27:44, unchallenged. Richard Spademan of Avon Lake, the runner-up, finished in 31:48 at 10:14/mi. That four-minute, four-second margin was decisive from the jump, and nothing in the field suggested it was ever in doubt.

Behind Spademan, the race fractured into distinct clusters. Robert Partezana (Hinckley, OH) held 3rd in 38:59 — a 12:33/mi effort — with Gary Zrimec of Parma just 46 seconds back in 39:45. Wesley Cowie and Ron Sr. Lesak filled out the top six within a minute of each other, both clocking times in the low 40s, while Lawrence Bach and John Richardson — four 72-year-olds in a row — ran a tight 44:00 and 44:49 respectively.

The back half of the field spread across a wide range of effort and pace. Mark Sullivan and Robert J. Chura pushed through the 50-minute barrier, and a cluster of five runners — Arthur Jarvis through Gary Dalessandro — spanned the 53- to 66-minute window. The final three finishers, Dave Sikorski, Peter Carfagna, and Dennis Fiorilli Sr., all came home within 39 seconds of each other around the 1:09 mark, a tight little finish of their own tucked inside the bigger story. On a muggy mid-May morning in Cleveland, all 18 men got it done.