Rocket City Marathon 10K — M50-54: Foster edges Sellers in a 20-second thriller

• Quinton Foster (Huntsville, AL) won the M50-54 age group in 7:47:28, averaging 75:14/mi over 10K.
• Lee Sellers finished just 20 seconds back in 7:47:48 — the closest margin anywhere on the M50-54 podium.
• Jon Pasek and Kirk Duguid rounded out the top four within 55 seconds of each other, separated by just 55 seconds from 3rd to 4th.
• Six runners — Kelly Johnson and Devlin Bourque through Garth Garris — were separated by under three minutes across places 6 through 11, making the mid-pack one of the tightest clusters of the morning.

Quinton Foster made the most of his home turf in Huntsville, crossing in 7:47:28 to claim the M50-54 title on a mild, humid December morning. Lee Sellers of West Chester, Ohio gave him everything he could handle, finishing just 20 seconds later at 7:47:48 — a gap that, across 6.2 miles, amounts to barely three seconds per mile between them. That's a race decided in the final stretch, not on paper.

Jon Pasek (Greer, SC) secured third in 7:52:15, with Kirk Duguid (Atlanta, GA) pressing close behind at 7:53:10 — just 55 seconds separating them. Jamie Trimble of Birmingham brought the Alabama contingent further into the picture with a 7:58:29 for fifth, while the battle for sixth was settled by the clock alone: Kelly Johnson and Devlin Bourque both clocked 7:59:22, but Johnson's name sits in sixth and Bourque's in seventh — a margin too fine to see in the displayed time, but real nonetheless.

The middle of the M50-54 field was remarkably compressed. Hiroki Tanoue, Wendell Ohern, Patrick Sumera, and Garth Garris all finished between 7:59:51 and 8:02:04 — four runners within two minutes and 13 seconds of each other across places 8 through 11. From there the field spread, with the final five finishers ranging from 8:23:45 to Jerry Dahlberg's 8:34:06 to close out the age group. Nineteen men toed the line in M50-54; all 19 finished.