NYC Half M25-29: Caswell Dominates a Deep New York Field

• Jacob Caswell, 1:18:15 (5:58/mi): won the M25-29 age group and held 3rd among men for most of the race, also posting the fastest men's split on the 20K-to-finish stretch.
• Gabriel Tarrau, 1:28:07 (6:43/mi): a steady climber through the men's field — from 17th at 5K all the way to 10th by the finish — claimed 2nd in M25-29, nearly 10 minutes back of Caswell.
• William Cruz, 1:33:33 (7:08/mi): locked in 3rd in M25-29 with the 12th-fastest men's split on the 15K-to-20K segment.
• A 27-finisher age group spread across more than 90 minutes of finishing times, from Caswell's 1:18:15 to the back of the field.

Jacob Caswell owned this race from start to finish. Running a 5:58-per-mile average through a crisp 40°F morning in New York, the 28-year-old New Yorker sat comfortably in 3rd among men at the 5K mark and never fell further than 4th at any checkpoint. His signature move came late: the fastest men's split on the 20K-to-finish leg sealed both the age-group win and underlined that he had plenty left when it mattered most.

Gabriel Tarrau, 29, told a different kind of story. He started deep in the men's field — 17th at 5K — and spent the entire race reeling runners in, one by one. His 9th-fastest men's split on the 5K-to-10K segment was the engine of that charge, and by the finish he had climbed to 10th among men and 2nd in M25-29 with a 1:28:07. At 6:43 per mile, that's a noticeably different gear than Caswell's, and the 9-minute, 52-second gap between them reflects it honestly.

William Cruz (1:33:33, 7:08/mi) rounded out the podium in 3rd, holding a steady 18th among men through the second half and contributing the 12th-fastest men's split on the 15K-to-20K stretch. Patrick Monroe (1:36:32, 7:22/mi) followed in 4th, and Rowan Kemmerly (1:40:33, 7:40/mi) rounded out the top five for Brooklyn, closing with the 23rd-fastest men's split on the final push to the finish.

Quinn Gruber (1:46:29) through Lucy DiBenedetto (2:48:11) filled out the rest of the listed field, spanning a wide range of efforts across a point-to-point course that gave every M25-29 runner something to take home from Prospect Park to Central Park.