Cleveland Marathon 5K — M35-39: Badgett Dominates in a Class of His Own

• Matthew Badgett, 18:12 (5:51/mi): Won the M35-39 group by a staggering 4 minutes and 30 seconds — the gap between 1st and 2nd was larger than the gap between 2nd and 20th.
• Closest battle of the day: Stephen Baes (4th, 23:43) and Rashad Franklin (5th, 23:44) were separated by just one second across 3.1 miles.
• Three-way tie at 27:04: John Dacyczyn (11th), Ricardo Cruz Estrada (12th), and Corey Turner Jr (13th) all clocked the same displayed time — but the timing system sorted them cleanly, so each earned his own place.
• 73 finishers completed the M35-39 race on a warm, humid Cleveland morning — 67°F with 83% humidity and a stiff 15 mph wind off the lake.

Matthew Badgett made this race his own from the gun. The 36-year-old from Lakewood crossed in 18:12 at a 5:51/mi clip — a pace so removed from the rest of the M35-39 field that runner-up Eric Niederhelman (22:42, 7:18/mi) finished more than four and a half minutes back. That's not a close race; that's a different gear entirely.

Behind Niederhelman, the real competition began. Kyle Youngblood (3rd, 23:09) held off Stephen Baes by 34 seconds, but Baes nearly couldn't shake Rashad Franklin — the Charlotte native pushed all the way to the line and came up just one second short in 23:44, settling for 5th. John Bishop (6th, 24:24) and Greg Flies (7th, 24:32) rounded out a tight mid-pack cluster, with just eight seconds separating them.

Further back, the 27:04 club made scorers work for their spreadsheets: Dacyczyn, Cruz Estrada, and Turner Jr all posted the same clock time, but the timing system's finer resolution placed them 11th, 12th, and 13th respectively — no ties, just very close racing on a humid May morning in Cleveland. Eric Fancher (14th, 27:36), Andrew Katich (15th, 27:41), and Brian Kandrac (16th, 27:45) kept the pace honest all the way through 20th place, where Craig Giambattista closed at 28:25 — with 53 more M35-39 finishers crossing behind him.