Men's Half Marathon: Belmont Hunts Down Mitchell for a Thrilling Late Surge

• Caleb Belmont wins in 1:16:21 (5:49/mi), overtaking Cason Mitchell — who led from the gun through mile 11 — with the decisive move coming between miles 6 and 11.
• Cason Mitchell, just 17 years old, ran at the front of a men's field of 3,977 for three-quarters of the race, finishing 2nd in 1:16:29 — eight seconds off the win.
• Joshua Acosta held 3rd from start to finish, crossing in 1:18:58 (6:01/mi) — a comfortable 1:07 clear of 4th.
• Christian Alcala made the biggest climb of the top 10, moving from 10th at the first checkpoint all the way to 4th by the finish, clocking 1:20:05.

Cason Mitchell, a 17-year-old from Menlo Park, came out swinging — he led the men's race from the very first checkpoint and held that position through miles 5, 6, and 11. Meanwhile, Caleb Belmont of Tampa was lurking. Belmont entered the second checkpoint in 3rd, moved to 2nd by the first split, and then made his decisive move somewhere between mile 6 and mile 11, seizing the lead and never releasing it. His fastest men's split on the 1.81M–5.34M stretch was the engine that set up the pass, and he closed in 1:16:21 at 5:49/mi.

Mitchell's response? He owned the final stretch — posting the fastest men's split from mile 11 to the finish — but by then the gap was set. Eight seconds separated them at the line, a margin that tells the story of a catch-up that almost became a re-catch. Mitchell's 1:16:29 at age 17, running at the front of nearly 4,000 men, is a result that stands entirely on its own.

Joshua Acosta, 36, from Prescott, was the model of consistency — 2nd at the gun, 3rd by checkpoint two, and 3rd all the way home in 1:18:58. He posted the 3rd-fastest men's split on that same early 1.81M–5.34M segment, showing he was genuinely in the thick of the early pace before Belmont and Mitchell pulled clear. Behind him, Mughil Radhakrishnan — another 17-year-old, this one representing Edogawa — ran a perfectly metronomic race from 5th to 5th, finishing in 1:21:04. Gerrit Pieter Van 't Riet of Amsterdam rounded out the top six at 1:21:19, while Tucker Creger (1:22:54) and Oleksandr Skorokhod (1:22:57) finished 7th and 8th just three seconds apart.