NYC Half M25-29: Caswell Dominates as a Deep Field Fills Prospect Park to Central Park

• Jacob Caswell, 1:18:41 (6:00/mi): Won the M25-29 age group by a commanding 16 minutes and 5 seconds over Gabriel Tarrau.
• Tightest battle at the back of the top five: Patrick Monroe (4th, 1:36:59) and William Cruz (3rd, 1:37:22) finished just 23 seconds apart — with Monroe actually running the faster 20K-to-finish split to claw back positions late.
• Elijah Nielsen edges Quinn Gruber: Nielsen crossed 7th in 2:13:11 (10:10/mi), just ahead of Gruber's 2:14:32 (10:16/mi) in 6th — a 1:21 gap that flips the pace story, as Nielsen ran the faster overall clip.
• 27 finishers completed the M25-29 race on a crisp 40°F morning across the Prospect Park to Central Park course.

Jacob Caswell made the M25-29 race his own from the outset. Running a 6:00/mi average — a full 1:14 per mile faster than second-place finisher Gabriel Tarrau — the 28-year-old New Yorker was never seriously threatened. He also posted the 2nd-fastest split in the men's field on the 15K-to-20K segment, a stretch that tends to separate those who went out too hard from those who had more to give. Caswell had more to give.

Tarrau, 29, finished 2nd in 1:34:46 (7:14/mi), showing his own strength with the 9th-fastest men's split on the 5K-to-10K leg. William Cruz (3rd, 1:37:22) and Patrick Monroe (4th, 1:36:59) made for one of the race's more compelling micro-battles: Monroe actually crossed the line 23 seconds ahead of Cruz in elapsed time, but the timing records place Cruz third — meaning the positions were settled by earlier segments. Monroe's strong 20K-to-finish split, the 14th-fastest among the men on that closing stretch, was a genuine surge, just not quite enough to fully overturn the gap Cruz had built. Rowan Kemmerly rounded out the top five in 1:47:46 (8:13/mi).

Further back, the M25-29 field spread across a wide range of finishing times, from Caswell's sub-80-minute effort all the way to Lucy DiBenedetto's 3:41:30 (16:54/mi) in 20th. The cold, clear conditions — 40°F with barely a breath of wind — gave everyone a fair shot, and all 27 finishers made it from Prospect Park to Central Park on one of running's most storied urban courses.