Rocket City Marathon 5K — M20-24: Wren wins it in the cold

• Dale Wren took the M20-24 title in 25:03 (8:04/mi), more than a minute clear of the field on a frigid 29°F morning.
• Nate Bryan was the closest challenger, finishing 2nd in 26:24 (8:30/mi) — 1:21 back.
• Dallas Baker rounded out the podium in 28:10 (9:04/mi), holding 3rd by a comfortable 1:43 over 4th-place Cameron Shedd (29:53).
• The back half of the field was tightly bunched: 6th through 10th — Slowik, Labrador, Mills, Rentfrow, and McAteer — were separated by just 1:45 across five finishers.

With temperatures locked at 29°F and a 16 mph wind cutting across Huntsville, the M20-24 group of ten had every reason to treat this as a survival run. Dale Wren didn't. The 24-year-old from Birmingham posted an 8:04/mi average to claim the win in 25:03 — a margin that made the outcome look comfortable from early on.

Nate Bryan, the 21-year-old from Madison, was the only finisher in Wren's zip code, crossing in 26:24 at 8:30/mi to take 2nd. That's a clear 26-second-per-mile gap between first and second — close in spirit, not in effort. Dallas Baker (28:10, 9:04/mi) held on for 3rd, and Cameron Shedd (29:53, 9:37/mi) took 4th, the two of them separated by a minute and forty-three seconds with nobody between them.

The real story of the back of the field was the cluster that formed from 5th onward. Keanan Cartee (5th, 34:09) ran largely alone in no-man's land, but Jakub Slowik (36:48), Marc Labrador (37:14), Brandon Mills (37:57), Simon Rentfrow (38:02), and Evan McAteer (38:33) all arrived within a minute and forty-five seconds of each other — five runners compressed into a tight window after 3.1 miles in bitter cold. McAteer closed out the ten-man field in 38:33.