M25-29: Friesth flips the script on Napa's fastest young men

• Jackson Friesth won M25-29 in 1:07:27 (5:09/mi) — a 44-second improvement on his 4th-place men's finish here in 2022 (1:08:11), this time taking the M25-29 title outright.
• Dante Capone was 2nd in 1:07:44 — a role reversal from 2022, when he finished 2nd among all men in 1:07:31 and led this cohort; Friesth closed that gap and then some.
• The top three — Friesth (1:07:27), Capone (1:07:44), and Ed Kiolbasa (1:08:05, 3rd) — all finished within 38 seconds, running 5:09–5:12/mi across 13.1 miles in 41°F Napa air.
• Patrick Bruce (4th, 1:09:28) dropped from his 3rd-place men's finish in 2022 (1:07:57) — his 1:31 gap to Kiolbasa made 4th the clear dividing line between the lead pack and the rest.

The headline story in M25-29 is a genuine redemption arc. Friesth finished 4th among all men here in 2022 in 1:08:11 — good, but not the win. Twelve months later he came back sharper, crossing in 1:07:27 to take the M25-29 crown and finish 5th among all men. Capone, who had beaten him in 2022 as the 2nd-fastest man in the entire field, pushed him hard again — 1:07:44 for 2nd in M25-29 and 7th among men — but Friesth's 4th-fastest men's split on the back half (6.9M to finish) sealed it. That's not luck; that's a runner who knew exactly where he needed to be strong.

Kiolbasa slotted in cleanly at 3rd in 1:08:05, running 5:12/mi and posting the 9th-fastest men's split on the closing stretch — consistent all the way through. Behind him, Bruce's 1:09:28 (4th) represented a tough day relative to his 2022 men's podium, and the 1:23 gap between him and Kiolbasa made the top three a genuine sub-group of their own.

After that lead pack, Quinn Todzo (5th, 1:12:30) and Benjamin Xie (6th, 1:12:37) ran nearly the same finish time — but Todzo had moved from 14th to 16th among men on the back half while Xie held steadier, making it a catch-up that just came a fraction too late. Jacob Milburn rounded out the top seven in 1:14:43 (5:42/mi), with the field spreading out from there across all 121 finishers.