M75-79: Jerry Learned Runs Away with Peachtree in the Heat

• Jerry Learned, 77, wins in 50:01 (8:03/mi), finishing more than two minutes clear of the field.
• Charles Yates, 78, surges late — climbing from deep in the pack to claim 2nd in 52:04 with a storming final two miles.
• Top-10 spans just 9 minutes: from Learned's 50:01 to John Fetner's 59:00 in 10th, the M75-79 leaderboard is tightly stacked across a competitive 314-finisher field.
• Jack Lewis and Greg Heath both clocked 1:04:39 to land 19th and 20th — separated only by the finest of timing margins.

On a warm, humid Fourth of July morning in Atlanta — 75°F and 68% humidity before the sun had any real say — Jerry Learned of Gainesville made the M75-79 race look almost straightforward. His 50:01 at 8:03 per mile was the kind of performance that sets the tone from the gun, and his gender place movement tells the story: he hovered in the 2,600s through the middle miles before finishing strongly, never wavering far from where he'd established himself early. The gap to second place — two minutes and three seconds — was decisive.

Charles Yates, 78, of Atlanta, ran the race in reverse: he was buried in the pack through the first half, but his 4M→5M split was among the sharper moves of the day, and he clawed his way from well outside the top 6,000 in the broader women's field ranking all the way to 3,576th by the finish — a steady, sustained charge that earned him 2nd in 52:04. Thomas Pate of Atlanta rounded out the podium in 53:47, running a more even-keeled race but never quite finding the gear to challenge Yates in the closing miles.

The mid-pack battle had its own drama. Tim Hynes (4th, 55:02) and Douglas Nelson (5th, 55:17) were separated by just 15 seconds, though they got there differently — Hynes ran a measured race while Nelson faded noticeably after a fast opening, losing significant ground before a 5M-to-finish rally brought him back into contention. Mike Moore (6th, 56:17) through Paul Weinfurter (7th, 57:08) and Allen Joyce (8th, 57:21) kept the pressure on, with all three finishing within a 64-second window. Donald Cochran (9th, 58:55) and John Fetner (10th, 59:00) both cracked the hour — no small feat in these conditions at 75-plus years old.