Masters Men 5K: Molloy Edges Healy in a One-Second Thriller

• Joseph Molloy, 52, wins in 17:26 — a 5:37/mi pace that would have beaten the 2022 overall men's champion (Aiden Kato, 18:30) by over a minute.
• Patrick Healy, 55, finishes just one second back in 17:27 at the same 5:37/mi average — a near-identical finish time masking a genuine race between two San Francisco locals.
• Afelio Figueroa, 69, claims 3rd in 19:04 — the oldest man on the podium by a wide margin, running 6:08/mi to finish nearly a minute clear of 4th.
• Christoph Schereck (20:04, 4th) and Alberto Tuy (21:24, 5th) round out the top five, with a 1:20 gap separating them.

The headline story in the Masters Men field of 200 is as tight as it gets: Joseph Molloy crossed the line in 17:26, with Patrick Healy just one second behind in 17:27. Both men averaged 5:37/mi through the San Francisco streets on a cool, humid July morning — the finish times nearly identical, the race itself anything but a formality. Molloy, at 52, held off Healy, 55, for the win. That Healy also raced the 10K — finishing 7th among the men there — makes his runner-up 5K effort all the more striking. Molloy, meanwhile, pulled double duty of his own: he took 2nd among the men in the 10K, making his Masters 5K victory the capstone of a remarkable weekend on the roads.

Put those winning times in context: the 2022 overall 5K champion ran 18:30. Molloy and Healy both ran faster — a reminder of just how sharp the front of this field was.

Third place belonged to Afelio Figueroa, 69, who ran 6:08/mi for a 19:04 finish — a performance that deserves its own spotlight. Figueroa finished 1:37 ahead of 4th-place Christoph Schereck (20:04, 6:28/mi) and was the oldest finisher in the top ten by a considerable margin. Behind Schereck, Alberto Tuy (21:24, 5th) and Isaac English (22:04, 6th) kept the competition honest through the top half-dozen.

The rest of the top 20 packed in tightly between 22:45 and 24:52, with Shawn McPeek (7th, 22:45), Bob Lemon (8th, 23:02), and Peter Counts (9th, 23:07) leading a cluster of runners separated by just seconds across multiple places. Dzmitry Nelipovich closed out the listed finishers in 20th at 24:52 — and with 180 more Masters Men finishing behind him, the depth of this field was as real as the drama at the front.