Ted Davison Leads a Strong M50-59 Charge Across the Sky

• Ted Davison, 54, finishes in 23:21:56 (14:01/mi) — the fastest M50-59 result, nearly 38 minutes clear of 2nd place.
• Bruce Dailey and Shane Simpson closed hard in the final stretch: Dailey's 18th-fastest men's split from 89.2M to the finish powered him to 2nd in 24:00:02; Simpson's 44th-fastest split on that same closing leg earned him 3rd in 24:09:10 — just nine minutes back.
• All top five earned a belt buckle, with Leroy H. Briggs (5th, 26:14:21) the last of them to crack the 26:15 mark — and all 29 finishers came in under the 30-hour cutoff.
• Greg Peters posted the 68th-fastest men's split from 78.7M to 84.2M — the same segment where Davison ran the 22nd-fastest men's split — a stretch that quietly separated the top three from the rest.

Ted Davison came to Leadville and ran like a man with a plan. Starting the race as the 97th-placed man in the broader men's field, he climbed steadily through the thin air above 10,000 feet and kept moving forward — reaching the men's top 60 by the first major checkpoint, then continuing to advance all the way to 37th among men at the finish. His 22nd-fastest men's split from 78.7M to 84.2M tells the story of a runner who still had something left when others were digging deep just to keep moving.

Behind him, the battle for 2nd and 3rd was decided in the final miles. Bruce Dailey — a Leadville local, no stranger to this course — was sitting 163rd among men at one point before methodically reeling in rivals one by one. His 18th-fastest men's split on the 89.2M-to-finish leg was a genuine surge, and it paid off with a 24:00:02 finish. Shane Simpson, making the trip from Leonay, ran the 44th-fastest men's split on that same closing segment and crossed in 24:09:10 — a hard-earned 3rd, just nine minutes behind Dailey after 100 miles.

Further back, the M50-59 field showed real depth. Greg Peters (4th, 26:05:21) and Leroy H. Briggs (5th, 26:14:21) both came in well under the 30-hour buckle threshold, while a tightly packed group from Ivan Schwendt (6th, 27:19:26) through Chandler Blake (10th, 27:56:24) finished within roughly 37 minutes of each other — all earning silver at the Race Across the Sky. Twenty-nine finishers in M50-59 is a testament to the field's grit at altitude.