Raymond Liu Outruns the Rain to Win M45-49 at Napa Valley Half Marathon

• Liu takes it in 1:24:23 (6:26/mi) — 53 seconds clear of runner-up Matthew Littlefield (1:25:16, 6:30/mi) in a 68-man field.
• Littlefield's dramatic fade: he entered the second half ranked 49th among men, then slipped to 66th — a notable drop that still left him 2nd in M45-49.
• Veselin Stoyanov surges mid-race: running the 74th-fastest men's split on the 3.1M→6.9M segment, he climbed from 92nd to 77th among men before settling at 88th — enough to lock up 3rd in 1:28:40.
• A tight 14–15 battle: Peter Herzog (1:49:47, 8:22/mi) edged Mischa Bastin (1:49:46, 8:22/mi) by one second for 15th — though Bastin's identical displayed time means Herzog crossed the line just a breath behind.

Raymond Liu ran a composed, quietly aggressive race through the 40°F drizzle along the Napa Valley course. He arrived at the 6.9M checkpoint already sitting 59th among men — a position he held all the way to the finish, where he posted the 51st-fastest men's split on the back half to seal the win. At 49 years old and averaging 6:26 per mile in wet, cold conditions, Liu's 1:24:23 was the clear class of M45-49.

Littlefield's 1:25:16 earned him a firm second place, but his race told a different story than Liu's. He was flying through the opening miles — 49th among men at the first checkpoint — before fading to 66th by the finish. That's a significant drop through the men's field, yet his early pace was strong enough that no one in M45-49 could catch him. Stoyanov, meanwhile, ran the opposite kind of race: sitting 92nd among men early, he found his stride through the middle segment and climbed steadily, finishing 3rd in 1:28:40 (6:46/mi). The gap from 3rd to 4th was a substantial 4:57, as Kris Mihalic crossed 4th in 1:33:37.

Behind the podium, Michael Holder (5th, 1:34:56) and Angel Avalos Alfaro (6th, 1:35:33) were separated by just 37 seconds, while the field spread out considerably from there — Stanley Ng (7th, 1:38:55) through the listed finishers stretching past the two-hour mark. Sixty-eight men finished M45-49 on a raw Napa morning, and Liu made it look like the best kind of day for a hard effort.