Men's 46K: Hemming Defends, Williams and Campbell Stage a Late Charge

• Eli Hemming wins in 3:58:01 (8:20/mi), the only man to break four hours — defending his 2025 title, though 7 minutes and 13 seconds slower than his winning time a year ago (3:50:48).
• Noah Williams closes hard: after starting 8th among the men, he climbed to 2nd by the finish (4:09:02), posting the 2nd-fastest split on the Olympic Valley East→Snow King segment to cement his place — a big improvement on his 4th-place finish here in 2025.
• Cole Campbell's multi-year arc: 6th here in 2024 (4:29:32), 9th in 2025 (4:13:01), 3rd in 2026 (4:09:27) — each edition faster, each finish higher on the podium.
• 25-second gap, two different stories: Williams (4:09:02) and Campbell (4:09:27) finished just 25 seconds apart, but Williams got there by surging from 8th to 2nd; Campbell swung from 2nd all the way back to 9th mid-race before fighting back to 3rd.

Eli Hemming came to Palisades Tahoe as the defending champion and left the same way. He led the men's race wire-to-wire — 1st at every checkpoint — and sealed the win in 3:58:01 at 8:20/mi, the only man in the 381-finisher field to crack four hours. His fastest splits on the Olympic Valley East→Snow King segment underlined just how dominant his day was. Racing at altitude between roughly 6,200 and 8,800 feet, Hemming — based in Kremmling, CO — was clearly no stranger to thin air. The title is his, back-to-back.

Behind him, the real drama belonged to Noah Williams and Cole Campbell. Williams, out of Leadville, CO (another high-altitude base), was 8th at the first checkpoint and methodically worked his way through the field, landing 2nd in 4:09:02. His 2nd-fastest split on the Olympic Valley East→Snow King leg was the move that locked it in — a catch-up that turned a mid-pack start into a podium. It's a sharp turnaround from 4th in 2025, when he finished in 4:06:09 — he ran slower this year but placed better, which says something about the depth of the field around him.

Campbell's route to 3rd was the most turbulent of the day. He opened in 2nd, drifted back to 9th by mid-race, then clawed all the way back to finish 3rd in 4:09:27 — the fastest Village→Olympic Valley East 2 split in the men's field helping fuel that recovery. His 4:09:27 is a full three and a half minutes faster than his 2025 result and nearly 20 minutes faster than his 2024 time. Chad Hall (4th, 4:17:01) ran strong early — moving from 6th to 2nd by the second checkpoint — but faded slightly in the back half, finishing with the 2nd-fastest Snow King→KT split as a consolation. Koken Ogasawara (5th, 4:22:14) and 21-year-old Noam Franchi (6th, 4:22:46) rounded out the top six in a tight cluster, with just 32 seconds separating them.