Boston Marathon M70-74: Thomas Amend Runs Away With It at 3:19:59

• Amend wins in 3:19:59 — a 7:38/mi average across 26.2 miles in Boston's 51°F, breezy conditions, finishing a full 1:21 clear of runner-up David Butler.
• Butler vs. Amend — a tale of two trajectories: Butler ran the 5K–10K segment faster than Amend (ranking higher in the men's field on that stretch), but Amend steadily climbed through the men's field all day and never relinquished the M70-74 lead.
• The podium gap widens: Jim Van Buskirk (3rd, 3:25:58, 7:51/mi) finished 4:38 behind Amend and 4:38 ahead of Steve Beasley (4th, 3:27:26) — a tidy 88-second cushion over Beasley.
• A deep field: 281 men finished in M70-74, with the top 20 all coming in under 3:42 — a testament to the quality of septuagenarian running on display in Boston.

Thomas Amend of Massachusetts made the home-crowd advantage count. Running at 7:38/mi, he steadily moved through the men's field across every checkpoint — from roughly 9,100th among men at 5K all the way to 8,629th by 40K — a consistent upward grind that reflects a controlled, even effort through the Newton hills and beyond. His winning margin of 1:21 over David Butler was never seriously in doubt over the final miles.

Butler (3:21:20, 7:41/mi) was the more aggressive early mover, posting a strong 5K–10K leg that briefly had him tracking well ahead of his eventual place. But his men's field position plateaued and edged backward through the middle and late miles, while Amend kept ticking forward. The finish gap tells the story: Butler held second comfortably, but the win was Amend's from the moment the race settled in.

Van Buskirk (3:25:58) and Beasley (3:27:26) — both representing Ontario — ran shoulder-to-shoulder through much of the race before Van Buskirk pulled clear by 1:28. Tae Bong Kang rounded out the top five in 3:28:18 (7:57/mi), while Aaron Grady (6th, 3:29:12) and Rainer Schochat (7th, 3:29:56) kept the pack honest through the 3:29 range. In a 281-finisher M70-74 field, running sub-3:30 at 70-plus years old in Boston is no small thing — and seven men did exactly that.