Rocket City 10K: Erick Kigen Runs Away from the M35-39 Field

• Kigen's 36:20 (5:51/mi) was untouchable — nearly 10 full minutes faster than 2nd-place Benjamin Wiemers (46:14).
• Tight podium battle: Carl Buch (49:00) and Jeremiah Mazzei (49:41) were separated by just 41 seconds for 3rd and 4th.
• Six runners clustered within 24 seconds — Wagner, Buckley, Pierce, and Hunt all finished between 57:08 and 57:32.
• 22 finishers made M35-39 a well-represented group on a mild December morning in Huntsville.

Erick Kigen simply ran a different race than everyone else in the M35-39 group. His 36:20 at 5:51 per mile wasn't just a win — it was a statement, leaving the field nearly ten minutes behind before the second-place finisher, Benjamin Wiemers of Montgomery, crossed in 46:14. That gap is the defining number of this race: Kigen was operating at a pace no one else in the group could answer.

Behind Wiemers, the real drama played out between Carl Buch (Chattanooga) and Jeremiah Mazzei (Huntsville). Buch secured 3rd in 49:00, with Mazzei pushing hard to 49:41 — close enough to keep it interesting but not quite enough to close. Kurt Van Wagenen rounded out the top five in 50:06, just 25 seconds behind Mazzei, making the 3rd-through-5th battle a genuine three-man affair spread across barely over a minute.

Further back, the race produced a remarkable mid-pack logjam. Kyle Wagner (57:08), Michael Buckley (57:22), Nathaniel Pierce (57:30), and Josh Hunt (57:32) all finished within a 24-second window for places 6 through 9 — four athletes from a mix of Georgia and Alabama towns running nearly in lockstep through the finish. On a 59°F overcast day with a light breeze, conditions were close to ideal, and that cluster of times shows just how evenly matched that tier of the field was.