M35-39 at CIM 2022: Tsotu Holds Off a Charging Field in the Rain

• Nick Tsotu won the M35-39 group in 2:20:30 (5:22/mi), finishing ahead of Justin Garrard by 43 seconds.
• The podium was remarkably tight: just 67 seconds separated 1st through 4th place.
• Justin Garrard was the biggest mover of the top finishers, climbing from outside the top 140 among men at the start to 66th by the finish — a relentless surge across the entire race.
• Thomas Adam posted the 62nd-fastest split in the field on the closing 40K-to-finish stretch, the sharpest late kick among the top five.

Sacramento delivered a cool, damp December morning — 56°F, light rain, 7 mph wind — and 730 men in the M35-39 group made the most of it. Nick Tsotu of Fair Oaks was at the front of the group all day, running a measured 5:22-per-mile pace that held up over 26.2 miles. His position among the men's field fluctuated slightly — drifting back briefly before reasserting itself — but he was never truly threatened for the age-group lead, crossing in 2:20:30.

Behind him, the battle for the podium was genuinely gripping. Justin Garrard (2:21:13) was the race's great charger: still outside the top 140 among men through the early miles, he reeled in runners one by one and closed with the 48th-fastest split in the field on the 35K-to-40K segment. Bryan Rigby (2:21:37) and Joel Conn (2:21:48) were similarly strong finishers — both posting among the fastest second-half splits in the field (69th and 70th, respectively) — and both were still climbing the leaderboard deep into the race. Rigby edged Conn by just 11 seconds for third.

Thomas Adam rounded out the top five in 2:22:38, and his 62nd-fastest closing split from 40K to the finish suggests he had plenty left in the tank when it mattered most. Scott Lankford (2:22:56) and Erik Stanley (2:24:15) held sixth and seventh, while the gap from 8th to 20th — Nate Clayson through Daniel Nally — spans just over four minutes across a deep, competitive field of 730 finishers.