M65-69: De Bruijne Runs Away with Napa in Dominant Fashion

• Izaak De Bruijne (3:29:14, 7:59/mi) won the M65-69 field by a commanding 26 minutes and 15 seconds over runner-up Steve Keplinger.
• De Bruijne's closing kick: he posted the 142nd-fastest men's split on the 20M→Finish stretch, climbing from 290th to 217th among men in the final miles.
• Timothy Wyman (3rd, 4:06:09) ran the 379th-fastest men's split on the 13.1M→20M segment — one of the stronger mid-race legs in this group.
• 12 finishers completed the M65-69 race across a 1:47:35 spread from first to last.

Izaak De Bruijne, 67, making the trip from Amersfoort, Netherlands, turned the M65-69 race into a wire-to-wire statement. Running at a 7:59/mi average along the Silverado Trail point-to-point course, he held 290th place among men through the early checkpoints and then steadily climbed — reaching 259th by 20 miles and surging to 217th by the finish. That closing stretch, where he posted the 142nd-fastest men's split in the entire field, was the exclamation point on an already decisive performance.

Steve Keplinger of Clovis, CA finished a clear 2nd in 3:55:29 (8:59/mi), holding steady through the race and moving from 416th to 381st among men over the final segment. Timothy Wyman of Ehrenberg, AZ rounded out the podium in 4:06:09 (9:23/mi), his mid-race 13.1M→20M split ranking 379th among men — a solid middle push — though he faded from 395th to 457th among men in the closing miles, giving up some ground late.

Behind the podium, Mark Ross (4th, 4:26:22) and Keith Pronske (5th, 4:33:50) kept their positions relatively stable through the race, while Tom Schmitthenner (6th, 4:46:32), Douglas Jordan (7th, 4:50:41), and Ranga Ranganathan (8th, 4:55:54) were separated by less than 10 minutes across three spots. John Moody (9th, 5:04:22), Barry Martin (10th, 5:08:05), Bob Fritzky (11th, 5:15:48), and Evan Chang (12th, 5:16:49) closed out the field — Chang finishing just 1:01 behind Fritzky despite carrying nearly the same pace over 26.2 miles on a cool, breezy Napa morning.