San Francisco Marathon M65-69: Mayes Holds Off Chan in a 22-Second Thriller

• Jonathan Mayes, 66 (San Francisco, CA) won the M65-69 race in 3:50:31 at 8:48/mi, edging Kam Chan by just 22 seconds.
• Kam Chan, 65 (Saratoga, CA) finished 2nd in 3:50:53 — the same 8:48/mi average pace, but Mayes held the lead when it counted.
• Tim Fowler, 67 (Bramley, Tadley) and Francis Enomoto, 66 (Sunnyvale, CA) staged a race-long battle of their own, separated by just 3 seconds at the line — 4:00:15 to 4:00:18.
• 32 men finished in the M65-69 field, with the top 10 spanning a 35-minute range from 3:50:31 down to 4:25:50.

The headline story in the M65-69 field belonged to the two men who ran San Francisco's hills at 8:48/mi: Jonathan Mayes and Kam Chan. Their finishing times were nearly identical — 22 seconds apart after 26.2 miles — but the race itself was anything but a parade. Mayes started the Garmin Hill Challenge segment moving in the mid-1300s among the men's field, then made a decisive surge in the back half, climbing from 1,160th to 1,051st in the final stretch. Chan's trajectory was different — he came out of the gates fast, vaulting from 1,635th all the way to 1,262nd by the second checkpoint, but Mayes's late charge proved the difference. Same clock, different journeys.

Third and fourth place produced the day's closest finish. Tim Fowler ran a steady, if gradually fading, race — he was 1,226th among men early but slipped to 1,424th by the finish, suggesting the hills took their toll. Francis Enomoto ran the opposite race entirely, starting deep in the field (2,668th among men at the first checkpoint) and reeling in competitors all the way to the line, posting the 717th-fastest split among all runners on the final 24.69-mile-to-finish segment. That closing surge got him to 4:00:18 — just three seconds behind Fowler at 4:00:15.

Bruno Cuminal (5th, 4:07:40) held a consistent position throughout, never dramatically surging or fading. Richard Cavicchi (6th, 4:13:42) and Koorosh Ghorashy (7th, 4:18:42) rounded out a competitive top seven. Heinz Raeber, 69, was the oldest man in the top 10, finishing 8th in 4:22:39 at 10:01/mi — a strong effort from the Oakland native on a cool, humid San Francisco morning.