M20-29 Half Marathon: Ethan Yan Runs Away With It

• Ethan Yan, 1:13:52 (5:38/mi) — wins M20-29 by 1:26 over Jake Ballantine's 1:15:18.
• Three-way battle at 4th: Luis Negretti (1:19:46), Timothy Liu (1:19:57), and Michael Zedan (1:19:57) finished within 11 seconds across three spots.
• Skip Carmichael climbed: the 3rd-place finisher (1:16:37) ran the 12th-fastest split in the field on the 1.2M–4.9M segment, moving from 24th among men to 16th before settling back to 26th by the finish.
• 232 finishers completed M20-29, with a nearly 12-minute gap from 1st to 20th place.

Ethan Yan, 24, of Redwood City, was never seriously threatened. Holding 10th among men from the first checkpoint all the way to the finish, he ran a wire-to-wire 1:13:52 at 5:38/mi — a margin of 1:26 over Jake Ballantine that tells you everything about how controlled and dominant his afternoon was. His split on the 1.2M–4.9M segment was the 10th-fastest in the men's field, confirming he was pushing real pace early and simply never let up.

Ballantine (1:15:18, 5:45/mi) was the race's most active mover near the front, climbing from 20th among men at the first checkpoint all the way to 15th by 4.9M — posting the 15th-fastest men's split on that segment — before settling at 17th at the finish. His 2nd place in M20-29 was well earned. Skip Carmichael, 23, from Colorado Springs, rounds out the podium at 1:16:37 (5:51/mi) with the 12th-fastest men's split on that early stretch, though his late fade from 16th back to 26th among men shows the effort cost him something in the closing miles.

The fight for 4th through 6th was the race's tightest subplot. Luis Negretti (1:19:46) and Timothy Liu (1:19:57) both ran strong closing segments — Negretti posting the 25th-fastest men's split on the 11.9M-to-finish stretch, Liu the 30th — steadily climbing from mid-pack to finish 4th and 5th respectively. Michael Zedan matched Liu's 1:19:57 to the second, with official timing separating them into 5th and 6th.

Further back, Isaiah Jeremiah Reyes (1:25:50) and Nate Tavakolian (1:25:53) staged their own miniature battle, finishing 8th and 9th just three seconds apart, while Rylan Flagg's 7:00/mi average at 16th and the cluster from 17th through 20th — all between 7:11 and 7:16/mi — show how tightly the mid-pack compressed across 232 finishers in M20-29.