San Francisco Half Marathon 2024: Bryan Botma Dominates M35-39

• Botma wins by 6:20 — his 1:20:07 at 6:07/mi was the decisive margin over runner-up Rasmus Wendel Egevang (1:26:27).
• Late surge seals it: Botma posted the 9th-fastest split in the field on the final 10.65M→Finish segment, moving from 14th to 11th among men overall while pulling away from a chasing pack.
• Tight battle for 2nd–4th: Egevang (1:26:27), Anthony Lucero (1:26:40), and Austin Mettetal (1:27:10) were separated by just 43 seconds across three places.
• Humberto Aguilar's charge: Aguilar climbed from outside the top 80 among men to 50th by the finish, backing it up with the 26th-fastest closing split on the final segment to land 5th in 1:31:00.

Bryan Botma, 38, from Watsonville, ran a race in a different class from the rest of the M35-39 field. His 1:20:07 — a 6:07/mi clip — put more than six minutes of daylight between him and second place, a gap that tells its own story across 13.1 miles of San Francisco's demanding streets. He moved as high as 11th among men overall by the finish, and his closing leg was genuinely fast: the 9th-quickest split from 10.65 miles to the line in the entire field.

Behind Botma, the race for the podium was a proper contest. Rasmus Wendel Egevang, 39, from Herlev, ran 1:26:27 at 6:36/mi to claim second, with his strongest relative segment coming on the 2.13M→6.62M stretch where he posted the 23rd-fastest split in the field — enough to move from 24th to 23rd among men at that checkpoint. Anthony Lucero (1:26:40, 6:37/mi) finished just 13 seconds behind in third, having also been competitive on that same middle segment with the 20th-fastest split there. Austin Mettetal rounded out the top four in 1:27:10, though he faded slightly late — dropping from 21st to 27th among men on the closing stretch — and Lucero's stronger finish held him off by 30 seconds.

Fifth place went to Humberto Aguilar, 38, whose race told a completely different story. He was buried well outside the top 80 among men at the early checkpoints but ran himself all the way to 50th by the finish, closing with the 26th-fastest split on the final leg to cross in 1:31:00 at 6:57/mi. Alex Greenberg (1:31:46), Kapil Bodkhe (1:33:02), and Benjamin Dean (1:33:15) filled out positions six through eight, with the top 20 of the 418-finisher M35-39 field all coming in under 1:41.