M25-29: Pedersen surges from sixth to claim San Francisco

• Robert Pedersen, 2:25:49 (5:34/mi) — won the M25-29 field after climbing from 6th among men at the opening checkpoint to 1st by mile 18, holding the lead the rest of the way.
• Nate Pendleton, 2:28:10 closed the gap late, posting the fastest split on the 18 Miles→25 Miles segment to lock up 2nd — 2:21 behind Pedersen at the line.
• Sheel Patel, 2:33:00 led among men through the first half of the race before fading to 3rd; his early pace was the fastest in the M25-29 field through the 1.81 Miles→5.55 Miles segment.
• Michael Vernau, 2:35:31 — runner-up here in 2024 (2:28:19) — finished 4th this year, 9:42 off Pedersen's winning time.

Robert Pedersen ran a patient, calculated race through the fog and 93% humidity of a cool San Francisco morning. He sat 6th among men at the first checkpoint, climbed steadily to 4th, then 2nd, and finally broke to the front somewhere between miles 15 and 18 — and never looked back. His 5:34/mi average across 26.2 miles was the sharpest pace in the M25-29 field, and his fastest split on the 5.55–6.52 mile segment signals he was already pressing well before the halfway mark.

Sheel Patel's story is one of early ambition and a tough second half. The San Francisco local hit the front among men by the second checkpoint and held it through mile 10 — the fastest M25-29 split on the opening 1.81–5.55 mile stretch underscoring just how hard he pushed early. But he faded from 1st to 3rd between miles 10 and 18, eventually finishing in 2:33:00 (5:50/mi). Nate Pendleton ran the inverse race: quietly sitting between 4th and 9th among men for most of the morning, he turned on the jets from mile 18 to 25 — the fastest M25-29 split on that late stretch — to reel in the field and secure 2nd in 2:28:10 (5:39/mi).

Michael Vernau, who finished 2nd in the men's race here in 2024 with a 2:28:19, couldn't quite replicate that form, settling for 4th in 2:35:31. The gap between 4th and 5th — David Cai in 2:37:32 — was 2:01, while the race for 11th through 15th was remarkably compressed: Christopher Sun (2:49:04), David Cheuvront (2:49:46), Siu Suet Li (2:49:47), Ryan Sung (2:49:53), and Daniel Murphy (2:49:59) were separated by just 55 seconds across five finishers in a field of 1,018.