M30-34 at the San Francisco Marathon: Sampath Dominates in 2:38:11

• Aneesh Sampath won the M30-34 field in 2:38:11 (6:02/mi), finishing 8th among all men — a 10-minute gap over the runner-up.
• Eric Alt and Bradley Furuya staged the race's best late duel, finishing 2nd and 3rd in 2:48:18 and 2:48:52 — both posting top-10 men's splits on the final stretch from 24.69M to the finish.
• Jason Yen (4th, 2:49:04) ran his strongest segment from 14.95M to 18M, posting the 24th-fastest men's split there — but his 2024 time of 2:49:04 fell four minutes back of his 2:45:15 here in 2022, when he finished 9th among all men.
• Places 6–8 — Brice Roques, Dmitrii Kuragin, and Benjamin Hoseus — all clocked 2:51:10 to 2:51:18, separated by just eight seconds across three finishers.

In cool, overcast conditions — 56°F with barely a breath of wind — the M30-34 field of 826 sent some serious talent across the San Francisco streets. Aneesh Sampath, 30, from San Francisco itself, was in a class of his own. He came through the middle miles climbing from 16th to 9th among all men, then delivered the 5th-fastest men's split from 18M to 24.69M to seal it. His 2:38:11 at 6:02/mi wasn't just a divisional win — it put him 8th in the entire men's field.

Behind him, the race for the podium came alive in the final miles. Eric Alt had been quietly working his way through the men's field all day — sitting 45th at one point — before unleashing the 10th-fastest men's split from 24.69M to the finish to claim 2nd in 2:48:18. Bradley Furuya was even more dramatic: he was 184th among men at the first checkpoint and carved all the way to 31st by the finish, posting the 4th-fastest men's split on that same closing stretch to land 3rd in 2:48:52. Alt ran him down in the standings, but Furuya's closing speed was the sharper of the two — Alt held on by 34 seconds.

Jason Yen (4th, 2:49:04) and Mattias Karlsson (5th, 2:49:28) rounded out a tight top five within 1:17 of each other. Then came one of the afternoon's most striking clusters: Roques (6th, 2:51:10), Kuragin (7th, 2:51:13), and Hoseus (8th, 2:51:18) were essentially inseparable — eight seconds across three runners. The gap to 9th, Liam O'Connor in 2:55:22, made clear that those three had found something the next wave hadn't.