Men's 8K: Casey Wires It from the Front in Virginia Beach

• Sean Casey wins in 25:04 (5:03/mi), leading the men's race wire-to-wire and posting the fastest middle split (2M→4M) in the men's field.
• Top four separated by just 32 seconds, with Zion Gregory (25:28), John Bowers (25:33), and Cooper Hurst (25:36) all within a half-minute of the winner.
• Zion Gregory doubles up: fresh off a 2nd-place finish in the Shamrock Half Marathon, he backed it up with 2nd here — one of the weekend's standout multi-race performances.
• David Angell, 49, clocks 26:27 (5:19/mi) to finish 7th among 2,737 men — a sharp result that stands out against a field loaded with runners half his age.

Sean Casey made this race look simple: he held first place from the opening miles through the finish line, crossing in 25:04 at a 5:03/mi clip. His 2M→4M split was the fastest in the men's field — the moment where any lingering question about the outcome was answered. On a cool, breezy Virginia Beach morning, Casey ran a controlled, dominant race.

Behind him, the real drama was the chase. Zion Gregory sat fourth at the first checkpoint before surging through the middle segment — his 2M→4M split was second only to Casey's — to claim second in 25:28. John Bowers (25:33) and Cooper Hurst (25:36) rounded out the podium and just off it, each holding their positions through the final stretch. Hurst's 4M→Finish was the third-fastest closing split in the men's field, a strong push to the tape that kept the gap over Zach Duval (5th, 26:05) comfortable.

Gregory's 2nd-place finish here deserves its own spotlight: he also ran 2nd in the Shamrock Half Marathon. Competing across two races in the same weekend and landing on the podium in both is a feat that puts him among the most impressive performers of the entire event.

Further back, Ryan Foster (9th, 26:58) improved on his own 2025 result here of 27:19 — a 21-second drop that shows real year-over-year progress. And 10-year-old Aiden Lota (15th, 30:00, 6:02/mi), finishing alongside 44-year-old Ben Adams-Hopkins (17th, 30:00), added a memorable footnote to a men's field that stretched 2,737 deep.