Broken Arrow 23K M40-49: Eberly Dominates at Altitude

• Josh Eberly (43, Gunnison, CO) won the M40-49 group in 2:04:52 (8:44/mi avg), finishing more than 8 minutes ahead of runner-up Andrew Newell.
• Andrew Newell (40, Bozeman, MT) took 2nd in 2:13:03, with the 25th-fastest High Camp→Finish split among the women's field — a strong close to hold off a charging podium.
• Chris Pappathopoulos (43, North Bend, WA) claimed 3rd with the 17th-fastest Snow King→Siberia split among the women — the standout mid-race surge of the podium group.
• Ari Backholm (49, Los Altos, CA) rounded out the top four at 2:21:54, the oldest finisher in the top five and steadily climbing from 50th to 43rd in the men's field across the race.

Josh Eberly ran this one from the front and never let go. Racing out of Gunnison, Colorado — itself sitting above 7,700 feet — Eberly may have arrived at Palisades Tahoe better acclimatized than most, and it showed. His 8:44/mi average across 23 kilometers of technical high-alpine terrain, topping out near 8,900 feet, was a cut above the field. He briefly dipped from 21st to 25th in the men's field during the Siberia→High Camp segment before reasserting, but the gap he built was never seriously threatened.

Andrew Newell made a move between Snow King and High Camp, climbing from 40th to 35th in the men's field, and his finish split was sharp enough to hold 2nd comfortably. Chris Pappathopoulos was the story of the middle miles: his Snow King→Siberia split ranked 17th among the women's field — a genuine surge — though he couldn't fully convert it into a podium challenge, finishing 3rd in 2:18:28.

Ari Backholm's 4th-place finish at age 49 deserves a mention. He was 50th in the men's field at the start and climbed steadily to 43rd by the finish, posting one of the stronger second-half splits in the group. Robert Schwartz (40, Truckee) mirrored that pattern in 5th, moving from 67th all the way to 50th — the biggest positional gain in the top five.

Behind the leaders, the M40-49 field spread across a wide range, from Eberly's sub-2:05 to finishers still working through the thin air past the 3-hour mark — 86 men in total making it to the line on a cool, near-perfect race day at Tahoe.