M20-24: Flavin Runs Away with It in 1:05:43

• JP Flavin won the M20-24 age group in 1:05:43 (5:01/mi), finishing 7th among men from start to finish — never wavering from that spot.
• Abdulmuhsen Alali took 2nd in 1:08:30, with Ian Cummings 3rd in 1:09:41 — just 71 seconds separating the two.
• Paolo Tiongson made the most notable move of the race, climbing from 19th among men at 5K all the way to 14th by the finish, posting the 9th-fastest men's split on the 15K-to-finish stretch.
• The gap from 3rd to 4th was razor-thin: Cummings (1:09:41) and Tiongson (1:09:52) were separated by just 11 seconds.

JP Flavin made this one look almost easy. The 20-year-old from Rochester Hills, MI locked into 7th among men at the opening checkpoint and never budged — holding that exact position through every split all the way to the tape. His 1:05:43 at 5:01 per mile was a commanding margin over the rest of the M20-24 field, and the steadiness of his race was as impressive as the pace itself on a warm, breezy Chicago morning.

Behind Flavin, Abdulmuhsen Alali (Boulder, CO) ran a controlled 1:08:30 to claim 2nd, while Ian Cummings — racing on home turf in Chicago — crossed in 1:09:41 for 3rd. The real drama in the top five belonged to Paolo Tiongson of nearby Skokie, who spent the early miles buried in 19th among men before reeling off the 9th-fastest split in the men's field from 15K to the finish, ultimately landing 4th in 1:09:52. He came up just 11 seconds short of Cummings, but his late charge was the most eye-catching move of the day in this age group.

Derek Rink rounded out the top five in 1:12:00, while Jose Colon Colon (6th, 1:13:34) and Ahmed Hamed (7th, 1:16:45) completed a front pack that separated itself sharply from the rest — 8th-place Brett Davidson finishing in 1:25:49, more than nine minutes back. Across all 142 finishers in the M20-24 age group, the field spanned a wide range of abilities, but the story at the front was Flavin's wire-to-wire control.