M35-39 Marathon: Lozick leads wire to wire in Kauaʻi's heat

• Eric Lozick won the M35-39 group in 3:25:25 (7:50/mi), finishing a full 12:55 ahead of runner-up Zach Cherry.
• Kainoa Guerin staged the most dramatic move of the race, climbing from 48th to 27th among men between the start and the halfway point.
• Three runners — Joseph Sarnoski, Warakorn Intavichai, and Lance Kyle — finished within 15 seconds of each other after 26.2 miles, separated by just 12 seconds across 10th through 12th.
• Rodrigo Piccoli Pinheiro Machado faded steadily through the second half, slipping from 15th to 22nd among men after holding strong early.

Running 26.2 miles on Kauaʻi in 77°F humidity is a different kind of test, and Eric Lozick passed it emphatically. The 35-year-old from Sierra Madre clocked a 7:50/mi average to win the M35-39 group by nearly 13 minutes — a margin that tells you this race was decided early and decisively. His movement through the men's field tells the story: he climbed from 10th to 8th among men by the halfway point, held that position through mile 22, and finished 10th among all men. The win was never seriously in doubt.

Zach Cherry (3:38:20) and Rodrigo Piccoli Pinheiro Machado (3:40:44) rounded out the podium, separated by just over two minutes. Cherry ran a steady, controlled race, advancing steadily through the men's field all the way to 18th. Machado, by contrast, ran a tale of two halves — strong enough through the early miles to sit 15th among men, but he faded across the back half, eventually finishing 22nd among men. The gap between 2nd and 3rd in M35-39 looks close on paper; the trajectories that produced it were anything but similar.

The real drama in the second half of the field belonged to Kainoa Guerin, whose surge from 48th to 27th among men between the gun and the halfway mark was the most aggressive move of the day in this group. He posted the 24th-fastest split among men on the stretch from the half to mile 22.25, and ultimately finished 5th in M35-39 in 3:50:37. Meanwhile, the battle for 10th through 12th place produced one of the tightest finishes of the morning — Sarnoski, Intavichai, and Kyle crossed within 15 seconds of each other after more than four hours of racing on a warm, humid Kauaʻi morning.