Men's Marathon: Charlie Lawrence Runs Away With It

• Charlie Lawrence, 2:22:30 (5:26/mi): Won the men's race by nearly six minutes over 2nd place — the most dominant margin on the podium.
• Early move, lasting lead: Lawrence climbed from 3rd to 1st between the opening segment and the 6.52-mile mark, then held the top spot wire-to-wire the rest of the way.
• Jack Rager's late charge: Rager entered the final stretch in 6th place and closed with the fastest split of anyone on the 24.69M-to-finish segment, vaulting to 3rd at 2:31:58.
• Connor Montgomery, improved: Montgomery finished 7th in 2:37:12 — a 70-second improvement over his 6th-place, 2:38:22 finish at this same race in 2023.

Charlie Lawrence, 29, of Boulder, CO, turned in a commanding performance across a cool, humid San Francisco morning. He ran the opening miles in 3rd before surging to the front on the 1.81M–6.52M segment — where he also posted the fastest split in the men's field on that stretch — and never looked back, crossing in 2:22:30 at a 5:26/mi clip. Michael Vernau, 25, of San Francisco, gave chase throughout, running the second-fastest split on that same early segment and holding 2nd place from the 6.52-mile mark all the way to the finish in 2:28:19 (5:39/mi). The gap between them: nearly six minutes.

The battle for the podium's final step was where the real late-race drama unfolded. Jack Rager, 26, also of San Francisco, was as far back as 13th in the men's field early on but reeled off the fastest closing split of the race from 24.69 miles to the finish, surging past Matthew Walker and others to claim 3rd in 2:31:58. Walker, 24, of Westerly, RI, had been as high as 3rd during the middle miles before fading slightly to 4th at 2:32:34 — just 34 seconds separating them at the line.

Hiroki Fujinaga, 39, of San Luis Obispo, was the veteran standout of the top ten, finishing 5th in 2:35:23 and posting the 5th-fastest split on the early 1.81M–6.52M segment. Connor Montgomery, 25, of San Francisco, rounded out the storylines worth noting: his 7th-place finish in 2:37:12 improved on his own 6th-place, 2:38:22 showing at this race a year prior — a minute and ten seconds faster on the same course. The top 20 in a men's field of 4,127 finishers ranged from Lawrence's 2:22:30 down to Saqib Rawda's 2:46:33, a testament to the depth at the front of this race.