M45-49: Rideout Runs Away from a Deep Field at CIM

• Ken Rideout, 48, wins M45-49 in 2:28:24 (5:40/mi) — nearly two minutes clear of runner-up Boyd Carrington's 2:30:23.
• Carrington's closing kick produced the 60th-fastest split in the field on the final 40K-to-finish stretch, powering him from 9th to 2nd in the age group over the back half.
• Brett Bernacchi ran the most relentless progression of the top five, climbing from deep in the men's field all the way to 3rd in 2:33:48 — a steady, methodical charge from start to finish.
• 629 finishers made M45-49 one of the largest cohorts on the course, with a 1:59 gap separating 1st from 20th place.

Cold, wet, and windy Sacramento conditions — 56°F, light rain, 9 mph gusts, and 90% humidity — set the stage for a grinding December marathon, and Ken Rideout handled it better than anyone in the M45-49 group. The 48-year-old from Pacific Palisades ran a composed, measured race: he sat comfortably in the men's field through the early checkpoints and then steadily reeled in runners over the second half, moving from 181st among men at 5K all the way to 158th by 40K before finishing strong. His 5:40/mi average in those conditions is the kind of effort that wins age groups at major marathons — and it did exactly that, by 1:59.

Boyd Carrington, 47, from Amityville, NY, had a different kind of race. He drifted back through the men's field through 30K before unleashing one of the sharpest late-race surges in the age group, recording the 60th-fastest split in the field on the 40K-to-finish segment and vaulting from well outside the top five to claim 2nd in 2:30:23. Brett Bernacchi (2:33:48) was the model of consistency, climbing continuously through the men's field from the opening gun to finish 3rd — never fading, never surging wildly, just grinding forward kilometer by kilometer.

Behind the podium, Jason Butler (4th, 2:35:08) and Lee Piercy (5th, 2:36:40) — a local from Folsom, CA — rounded out a tightly packed top five separated by just 8:16 from first to fifth. Michael Kraus (6th, 2:37:10), Sanjay Rawal (7th, 2:37:44), and Jason Tavakolian (8th, 2:38:18) kept the pressure on through the top ten, all finishing within 10 minutes of Rideout's winning time. In a field of 629, that's a remarkably competitive age group on a tough December morning.