Men's Ultramarathon: Rocha Runs Down the Clock with a 6:09 Statement

• Tyler Rocha wins in 6:09:05 (7:03/mi), slicing more than nine minutes off his own 4th-place finish here in 2024 (7:18:13) — the fastest men's time of the day by a 15-minute margin.
• Yu Wu surges from 4th to 2nd, posting the fastest second-half split in the men's field to close in 6:24:05 — a 15-minute gap to Rocha, but a clear statement of the strongest finishing kick among the men.
• Carson Clowes, the 2024 champion, finishes 3rd in 6:32:02 — defending champion, runner-up in 2023 (6:37:19), and still on the podium, but unable to match his title-winning pace this year.
• Christopher Grove rockets from 11th to 5th, the biggest positional climb in the top ten, finishing 7:26:28.

Tyler Rocha came to San Francisco with unfinished business. A year after crossing in 7:18:13 for 4th place, the 28-year-old from Seattle rewrote his story entirely — running 52.4 miles across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Golden Gate Park, and back again at a 7:03/mi clip to win in 6:09:05. That's not a small improvement. That's a different athlete. His second-half split was the second-fastest among all the men, meaning he didn't just bank time early — he held his pace when the course and the cool, damp San Francisco morning had already done their work on everyone else.

Behind him, the most compelling move belonged to Yu Wu. The 39-year-old from Pasadena sat in 4th at the halfway checkpoint, then laid down the fastest second-half split in the men's field to climb to 2nd in 6:24:05. He ran Rocha down on the back half — just not quite enough of it. Carson Clowes, the reigning champion who also finished 2nd here in 2023, found himself on the other side of that equation: 2nd at the midpoint, 3rd at the finish in 6:32:02. His 7:29/mi average is honest work over 52.4 miles, but Wu's closing pace was simply faster.

Devin Williams rounded out the top four in 6:54:37, and then the race opened into a tightly packed cluster — Christopher Grove (7:26:28), Chris Miller (7:28:40), Jonathan Shamwana (7:29:03), and Shawn Barton (7:30:05) all finishing within four minutes of each other across places 5 through 8. Grove's climb from 11th to 5th on the second half was the standout move of that group. In a men's field of 85, the depth held all the way down, with Jesse Larios (13th, 8:03:14) returning after a 6th-place finish in 2024 and Saif Amath (19th, 8:41:47) improving on his 10th-place effort from a year ago.