Men's Race: Cortes Holds the Line in Sonoma Farm Country

• Anthony Cortes wins in 1:15:17 (5:45/mi), just 17 seconds off the course record set in 2013 — the fastest men's finish at Clo Cow in the editions we have since Robert Pedersen's 1:14:56 in 2023.
• Justin Wu (1:18:17) edges Cameron Olean (1:18:23) — a 6-second gap at the line after a genuine back-and-forth battle through the middle miles.
• Mitchell Larrieta Angeles, 19, posts the fastest men's split on the Mile 6.55→Mile 10 segment, surging from 5th to 4th on that stretch and finishing 4th overall in 1:19:23.
• Adrian Lopez and Leonardo Macedonoio finish in 1:38:53 — separated by just 0.23 seconds, 19th and 20th in a men's field of 148.

Anthony Cortes led wire-to-wire, holding 1st place through every checkpoint on a crisp 44°F morning across rolling Sonoma County farmland. His 5:45/mi average was a cut above the rest of the field, and he backed it up with the fastest men's split from 5K through Mile 6.55 — a sign he was pushing from early on, not just sitting on a lead. The win puts him 21 seconds clear of 2nd place, a margin that was never seriously threatened once he established his rhythm.

Behind him, Wu and Olean traded positions twice before the finish. Olean ran 3rd through the early miles, dropped to 3rd again by Mile 10 after Wu moved up, and couldn't close the gap over the final stretch — Wu's 2nd-fastest men's split from Mile 10 to the finish sealed 2nd place in 1:18:17. Olean crossed just six seconds later in 1:18:23, running the 3rd-fastest closing split among the men. The gap between them is narrow; the effort to get there was not.

The most electric segment story belongs to 19-year-old Mitchell Larrieta Angeles of Oakland, who turned in the single fastest men's split on the Mile 6.55–Mile 10 stretch — faster than Wu, faster than Olean, faster than Cortes on that leg — to move from 5th to 4th and hold it to the line, finishing in 1:19:23 at 6:03/mi. Patrick Lynch rounded out the top five in 1:21:48, while Nate Seltenrich (1:25:32) and Scott Harrington (1:26:27) led a strong mid-pack charge through the rest of the top ten.