M35-39: King Reclaims His Crown in 2:18:50

• Kyle King wins in 2:18:50 (5:18/mi), surging from 9th among men to 1st between 21K and 25K — and never looking back.
• Wojciech Kopec ran the fastest men's split from 5K to 10K and led the men's race for a long stretch, ultimately finishing 2nd in 2:23:07 — 4:17 behind King.
• Kyle Smith (5th, 2:24:54) ran the 3rd-fastest men's split from 40K to the finish — a strong late charge — improving on his 3rd-place finish here in 2024 (2:27:01) by over two minutes, though landing one spot lower on the leaderboard.
• Positions 7 through 11 — Matthews (2:35:21), Dahl (2:35:42), Pederson (2:37:44), Lechtenberg (2:37:45), and McCaffrey (2:37:50) — packed into a 2:29 window across five places.

Kyle King came to Arlington with history on his side — he won this race outright in 2022 (2:19:19) and again in 2024 (2:25:06) — and on a crisp 42°F morning, he delivered his fastest winning time of those editions. He didn't dominate from the gun: he was sitting 9th among men through the early going, patient and controlled. Then came the 21K-to-25K segment, where King posted the fastest men's split of that stretch and vaulted to the lead. From that point forward, nobody got close. His 5:18/mi average over 26.2 miles, in a 2,420-finisher M35-39 field, was a statement performance.

The early race belonged to Kopec and Geoffrey Kipchumba. Kopec (Poland) and Kipchumba (Peyton, CO) went 1-2 on the 5K-to-10K split — the two fastest men's splits of that segment in the entire race — with Kopec briefly holding the overall men's lead. Kopec held his position admirably, finishing 2nd in 2:23:07, while Kipchumba faded slightly to 4th in 2:24:47. Michael Schmidt (Boston, MA) was steadier throughout, posting the 3rd-fastest men's split from 30K to 35K and locking in 3rd place in 2:23:45 — just 38 seconds behind Kopec at the line.

The battle for 7th through 11th was one of the day's most compelling sub-plots. Steven Matthews (2:35:21) and Matt Dahl (2:35:42) were separated by 21 seconds, and then Clark Pederson, Brett Lechtenberg, and Conor McCaffrey finished in a 6-second cluster — 2:37:44, 2:37:45, and 2:37:50 respectively. Five athletes, two minutes and twenty-nine seconds, five distinct places. In a race with no prize money and 2,420 finishers in this group alone, that kind of racing is its own reward.