Long Beach Marathon: Ott Leads Wire-to-Wire in a Field of Eight

• Christopher Ott (Kennesaw, GA) won in 4:04:07 (9:19/mi), holding 1st place from start to finish and posting the fastest split on the 5.5M–13.1M middle segment.
• Edgar Castro (South Gate, CA) was a steady 2nd the entire way, finishing in 4:51:36 — 47 minutes and 29 seconds back.
• Mik Poulin (St. Louis, MO) made the day's sharpest late move, climbing from 5th to 4th with the 2nd-fastest 20M–finish split in the field, overtaking Kendall Oshiro-Hernandez (Long Beach, CA), who slipped from 4th to 5th and finished in 5:53:00.
• The back half of the field spanned more than an hour and a half: Daisy Aquino crossed in 7:00:08, Kaitlyn Quevedo in 7:13:44, and Nasim Karimi in 7:38:31.

Christopher Ott made this one look controlled from the gun. The 35-year-old from Kennesaw, Georgia never relinquished the lead — sitting 1st through every checkpoint — and backed it up with the fastest middle-segment split (5.5M to 13.1M) in the eight-person field. His 9:19/mi average held firm across 26.2 miles on a warm Long Beach morning, with temperatures at 72°F and humidity hovering near 73%.

Edgar Castro (South Gate, CA) was equally consistent in 2nd, mirroring Ott's positional steadiness across all four checkpoints. His 4:51:36 (11:07/mi) was a clear step behind Ott's pace, but he was never threatened for the runner-up spot. Jess Clark (Long Beach, CA) completed the podium in 3rd at 5:18:47 (12:10/mi), also posting the 3rd-fastest middle-segment split — a local finisher on home roads.

The most compelling move of the race came late. Mik Poulin (St. Louis, MO) sat 5th through the 20-mile mark, then unleashed the 2nd-fastest closing split in the field to overtake Kendall Oshiro-Hernandez (Long Beach, CA) and secure 4th in 5:30:32. Oshiro-Hernandez, who had held 4th to that point, managed only the 4th-fastest closing split and finished 5th in 5:53:00 — a gap of nearly 23 minutes to Poulin at the line.