Cleveland Marathon 5K — M55-59: Wingler Dominates in a Field of 23

• Bill Wingler (Strongsville, OH) won the M55-59 group in 20:57 at a 6:45/mi pace — nearly 5 minutes clear of 2nd place.
• John Rhoades (Rocky River, OH) claimed 2nd in 25:51 (8:19/mi), holding off Alan Trask (Wauwatosa, WI), who finished 3rd in 26:51 (8:39/mi).
• Joseph Marett and Mickey Pastor — 4th in 29:02 and 5th in 29:12 respectively — were separated by just 10 seconds in a tight battle for the fourth spot.
• Paul Catalano and Gerard Van Groningen both clocked 34:19, with Catalano edging Van Groningen for 13th by the slimmest of margins.

Bill Wingler didn't just win the M55-59 age group — he lapped the field in competitive terms. His 20:57 at 6:45/mi was a performance in a different gear entirely from everyone behind him, with John Rhoades' 25:51 marking the nearest challenger nearly five full minutes back. On a humid Cleveland morning — 83% humidity, 15 mph winds, 67°F — that kind of gap doesn't happen by accident. Wingler ran a race that belonged in a different conversation.

Rhoades and Trask had a clean podium battle of their own. Rhoades' 8:19/mi pace was meaningfully stronger than Trask's 8:39/mi, and the 60-second gap between 2nd and 3rd reflected that difference. Just behind them, the 4th-through-6th cluster — Marett (29:02), Pastor (29:12), and Eric Berko (29:45) — played out as a genuine race-within-a-race, with only 43 seconds separating all three.

Further back, the field spread across a wide range of efforts. Denny Bowles crossed in 9th at 31:09 (10:02/mi), while Iftekhar Ansari (10th, 32:54) and Corey Scott (11th, 33:12) kept the competition honest into the double digits. The most striking coincidence of the day came at 13th and 14th: Catalano and Van Groningen — both from the greater Cleveland area — posted the exact same displayed time of 34:19, with the timing system needed to split them by a hair for the final standings.