M70-74 Half Marathon: Mahdavian Dominates a Tough San Francisco Morning

• Hadi Mahdavian, 73, wins M70-74 in 2:10:32 (9:57/mi), finishing more than 12 minutes clear of the field.
• Ray Abraham takes 2nd in 2:22:58 — a 12-minute, 26-second gap back to 3rd place Shoichiro Yoshioka (2:36:43).
• Yoshioka and Simon Yeh stage the group's closest battle: just 40 seconds separate 3rd (2:36:43) and 4th (2:37:23).
• Ten finishers completed the M70-74 race under cool, humid San Francisco skies.

Hadi Mahdavian of Hillsborough made the M70-74 race his own from the start. The 73-year-old ran a 9:57/mi average across the hilly San Francisco course — a pace none of his competitors could match — and crossed in 2:10:32. His gender standings tracked a familiar pattern for a front-runner navigating a large field: he moved steadily through the pack on the first half before ceding some positions on the back end, but within M70-74 he was never threatened. The margin over 2nd place Ray Abraham was 12 minutes and 26 seconds — a commanding wire-to-wire statement.

Abraham, 70, of Walnut Creek, held 2nd place solidly in 2:22:58 at a 10:54/mi clip. Behind him, the race's most compelling subplot unfolded between Shoichiro Yoshioka and Simon Yeh. Yoshioka, 71, making the trip from Kitakyushu, Japan, logged a 2:36:43 — but Yeh, also 70 and also from Walnut Creek, ran him down over the closing miles. Yeh's strongest segment came from 10.65M to the finish, where he posted one of his better relative splits of the day, trimming the gap to just 40 seconds at the line. It wasn't quite enough to overtake Yoshioka, but the chase made for the sharpest finish in the group.

Russell Norman, 72, of San Francisco, rounded out the top five in 2:44:30 (12:33/mi), followed by Gilbert Varela (2:49:18), Franklin Grant (2:57:36), Michael Lotze (2:58:20) — those two separated by only 44 seconds — and Robert Mckinley in 3:02:36. Jerry Salazar of Santa Maria closed out the M70-74 field in 3:29:58, completing all 13.1 miles at 16:01/mi. Ten men, ages 70 through 74, finished a race that demands something from everyone who toes the line in San Francisco.