M20-24: Dalton Graves Dominates a Frigid Rocket City Half

• Dalton Graves, 21, wins the M20-24 group in 1:13:07 (5:35/mi) — a 1:44 margin over runner-up Mark Porter.
• Top three separated by just 2:31 across 13.1 miles in 29°F conditions with a 16 mph wind.
• Bennett Brake makes the day's biggest move, climbing from 13th to 9th among men in the back half with the 7th-fastest closing split in the field.
• Aidan Goyette and Kevin Portinga finished 10th and 9th in 1:35:57 and 1:35:32 respectively — separated by just 25 seconds after 13.1 miles at a 7:17–7:19/mi clip.

Huntsville served up a brutal morning — 29°F, clear skies, and a 16 mph wind — and Dalton Graves, 21, from Mooresville, NC, answered with one of the sharpest performances in the M20-24 field. His 1:13:07 at 5:35/mi held him 2nd among all men throughout the race, and he closed the final stretch from 6.8 miles to the finish with the 3rd-fastest split in the entire field on that segment. That's not just winning an age group — that's racing at the front of the whole event.

Mark Porter, 22, of Huntsville, ran a controlled 1:14:51 (5:43/mi) to claim 2nd, holding 3rd among men wire to wire. Ian Hobbs, 20, from La Grange, KY, rounded out the podium in 1:15:38 (5:46/mi), finishing 4th among men. The gap from Graves to Hobbs — just 2:31 — tells you how tightly contested the top tier was, even as the wind and cold made every mile a negotiation.

The race's most compelling back-half story belonged to Bennett Brake, 24, out of Quincy, MA. Running 13th among men at the 6.8-mile mark, Brake reeled off the 7th-fastest closing split in the field to surge to 9th, finishing in 1:21:22 (6:12/mi) — a full 4:44 ahead of 5th-place Aidan Barton (1:24:06). Barton, by contrast, held his 15th-place men's standing flat across the second half, unable to match Brake's late charge.

Further back, the battle between Kevin Portinga (9th, 1:35:32) and Aidan Goyette (10th, 1:35:57) played out over 13.1 miles to a 25-second verdict, with Abraham De La Cruz (11th, 1:36:16) just 19 seconds further back — a three-man cluster that made the 9th-through-11th spots genuinely competitive to the line.