Kaua'i Marathon M30-34: Sterling Mccall Runs Away With It

• Mccall wins in 3:37:24 (8:18/mi), finishing nearly 12 minutes clear of runner-up Marshall Holland — the largest gap on the M30-34 podium.
• Holland's late surge: he climbed from 36th among men at the opening checkpoint all the way to 29th by the finish, posting the 13th-fastest split in the men's field on the final 24.15-mile-to-finish segment.
• Xiang Li and Juan Pilarte were separated by just 2:47 at the line — Li in 4:04:11, Pilarte in 4:06:58 — after tracking each other closely through the middle miles.
• Andrew Tabarracci ran the opening stretch as one of the faster men in the field (29th among men through 6.55 miles) before fading to 53rd by the finish — the most pronounced fade on the M30-34 podium fringe.

Sterling Mccall from Fitchburg, WI, made the Kaua'i heat look manageable, clocking 3:37:24 at an 8:18/mi clip to take the M30-34 title by a commanding margin. His position among the men's field was remarkably consistent — hovering between 16th and 18th at every checkpoint — which tells the real story: no dramatic surges, no fading, just a steady, controlled effort that nobody in the age group could answer.

Marshall Holland, racing on home island out of Kapaa, was the most interesting mover in the group. He spent the early miles buried in the mid-30s among men but kept chipping away, and his 13th-fastest men's split on that brutal final stretch from 24.15 miles to the finish dragged him all the way to 29th in the men's field and a clear second in M30-34 at 3:49:23.

The battle for third was tight but not quite a thriller — Li and Pilarte ran similarly through the middle of the race, but Li opened a 2:47 cushion by the tape. Pilarte, a local from Wahiawa, posted the 33rd-fastest men's split on the opening 6.55-mile segment, suggesting he came out conservatively and couldn't quite make up the ground in the back half.

Behind the top four, the 77°F humidity and Kaua'i's relentless course did its work: Tabarracci's fade from 29th to 53rd among men is a cautionary tale, and the gap from 5th (4:11:15) to 20th (4:50:16) across 43 finishers shows just how much the conditions stretched the field.