Broken Arrow 18K M40-49: Bigler Dominates, and Erases a Year of Unfinished Business

• Joshua Bigler, 1:39:21 — 11 minutes clear of 2nd place, and nearly 20 minutes faster than his own 4th-place finish here in 2024 (1:58:25).
• Gabriel Monroe finished 2nd in 1:50:34, with Matt McDermott 3rd in 1:56:31 — a 6-minute gap separating the podium's second and third steps.
• Bigler's KT 22→Siberia split was the 3rd-fastest on that segment across the entire men's field — the kind of mid-race surge that explains where the race was won.
• David Youmans (4th, 1:58:56) and James Mizell (5th, 2:01:34) both posted the 20th- and 23rd-fastest Snow King→KT 22 splits among the men, running that climb within 2:38 of each other at the finish.

Joshua Bigler came back to Broken Arrow with something to prove. A year ago he crossed this same finish line in 1:58:25, good for 4th among the men. On Friday he erased that memory entirely, clocking 1:39:21 at an 8:53/mi average across a course that climbs through thin air between 6,200 and 8,000 feet. That's not a minor improvement — it's a transformation. He held 5th place among the men's field through most of the race, then announced himself on the KT 22→Siberia segment with the 3rd-fastest split in the men's field on that stretch, a move that cemented a win by more than 11 minutes.

Gabriel Monroe (1:50:30, 9:53/mi) was the class of the rest of the M40-49 field, running a composed and consistent race — he held 10th place among the men from start to finish, never drifting, never surging, just executing. Matt McDermott (1:56:31, 10:25/mi) rounded out the podium in 3rd, climbing through the men's field across the back half — he moved from 22nd to 18th among men by the finish, with the 16th-fastest Siberia→Finish split in the men's field doing the work.

David Youmans (4th, 1:58:56) and James Mizell (5th, 2:01:34) traded punches on the Snow King→KT 22 climb — Youmans with the 20th-fastest men's split on that segment, Mizell right behind with the 23rd — before Mizell faded just enough over the remainder to finish 2:38 back at the line. Tom Baird (6th, 2:03:39), Colin Hamel (7th, 2:05:56), and Jerad Slagle (8th, 2:09:16) kept the mid-pack honest, with 69 finishers in total making this one of the day's deeper fields on the mountain.