M70-74: Pat Brew Powers Home on the Silverado Trail

• Pat Brew wins in 4:06:52 (9:25/mi), finishing 20 minutes clear of the field and closing with his strongest segment — posting the 531st-fastest men's split on the 20M-to-finish stretch.
• Ezequiel Jimenez holds off Frank Polansky for second: 4:27:09 to 4:43:40 — a 16-minute gap that opened after Jimenez ran the 6.2M–10M segment as his best leg of the day.
• Frank Polansky found his legs mid-race, posting his sharpest men's split on the 16.2M–20M stretch before finishing third in 4:43:40.
• Five men, four different cities, one net-downhill run through California wine country from Calistoga to Napa — the M70-74 field spread across nearly 100 minutes of racing.

Pat Brew was the story from start to finish — and then some. The 70-year-old from Pacific Grove ran a measured 9:25/mi through the vineyards, but his most telling move came late: while others were fading, Brew was climbing the men's standings in the final stretch, moving from 738th among men at the 16.2-mile mark all the way up to 640th by the finish. That closing surge, good for the 531st-fastest men's split on the 20M-to-finish leg, sealed a dominant wire-to-wire win in 4:06:52.

Behind him, the race for second was far less serene. Ezequiel Jimenez of La Puente ran his strongest segment early — the 6.2M–10M stretch — and built enough of a cushion to hold on through a difficult back half. His gender place told the story of a man working hard to stay afloat, sliding from 547th at the 6.2-mile mark to 788th at the finish, but the 4:27:09 was enough to keep Frank Polansky at arm's length. Polansky, 73, from Palo Alto, actually found something between miles 16.2 and 20 — his best split of the race — but finished in 4:43:40, 16 minutes back of Jimenez.

Steven Rosenberg, 74, crossed in 5:22:57 (12:19/mi), and Gregory Katz of Santa Cruz rounded out the five-man field in 5:46:58 — a 13:14/mi effort across 26.2 miles that deserves its own measure of respect on this classic point-to-point course.