M25-29: Iritani Runs Away with It on the Parkway

• Jacob Iritani won the M25-29 group in 2:06:39 (6:20/mi), finishing 2 minutes flat ahead of runner-up Xavier Venegas.
• Iritani climbed from 5th to 3rd among men by the Mile 4–10 stretch and held that position to the finish — his was the defining move of the race.
• Sam Grunklee held 7th among men through Mile 10 before fading to 23rd — the sharpest slip of anyone in the top three of this group.
• The field of 21 spread across a 93-minute window, from Iritani's 2:06:39 down to the back of the pack.

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Jacob Iritani made his intentions clear early. Starting the race 5th among men, he had already climbed to 3rd by the Mile 4–10 segment and never budged from there, running a composed 6:20-per-mile average across all 20 miles in 74°F heat. The two-minute gap he put into Xavier Venegas wasn't a late surge — it was steady, relentless pressure from the opening miles onward.

Venegas, 25, gave chase as well as anyone could. He moved up from 3rd to 4th among men early — a slight position swap with Iritani as the race sorted itself out — and ultimately crossed in 2:08:39 at 6:26/mi, a genuinely strong run that simply ran into a better one on the day. Sam Grunklee rounded out the podium in 2:19:35, though his race told a different story: sitting 7th among men at the halfway checkpoint, he slid steadily back to 23rd by the finish, the wear of the warm morning catching up over the final miles.

Behind the top three, the M25-29 field compressed into a competitive mid-pack cluster. Mario Mayo (2:31:16) and Oleh Hamchuk (2:32:37) were separated by just 81 seconds at 4th and 5th, while 6th through 9th — Adan Cervantes, Jonathan Gonzalez, Angelo Cabuang, and Daniil Shmigelskiy — were packed within a tight three-minute window between 2:39:29 and 2:42:03. From there the field stretched out across the afternoon, with the final listed finisher Robert Kraemer completing the 20 miles in 3:39:34 — nearly 93 minutes behind Iritani's winning time.