M40-44: Paullin Dominates While Gilbert Storms the Back Half

• Matthew Paullin won the M40-44 group in 2:46:19 (6:21/mi), finishing more than 11 minutes clear of the next man.
• James Gilbert and Bryan Bennett finished 2nd and 3rd separated by just 7 seconds — both clocking 6:47/mi averages.
• Gilbert made one of the race's most dramatic moves, climbing from 71st among men at the opening checkpoint all the way to 27th by the finish — fueled by the 12th-fastest men's split on the 35K-to-25.2-mile stretch.
• Timothy Schwuchow (8th, 3:11:55) and Tom Byers and Ree Ha (9th and 10th, both 3:12:04) packed the 8–10 slots within a tight 9-second window.

Matthew Paullin made the M40-44 race look almost unfair. Running 6:21 per mile through Virginia Beach's 71°F, 17 mph winds and thick humidity, the 43-year-old from Strongsville held 5th among men from the very first checkpoint and never wavered — an iron-steady performance that put him across the line in 2:46:19, more than eleven minutes ahead of anyone else in the age group.

Behind him, the real drama played out between James Gilbert and Bryan Bennett. Both finished in 2:57-something, both averaged 6:47/mi, and when it was over only seven seconds split them. Bennett, the local Norfolk runner, ran a more even race — sitting around 27th among men through the middle miles before fading slightly late. Gilbert took the opposite approach: he was back in 71st among men at 5K and was still 66th at the halfway mark. Then he turned on the jets. His 35K-to-finish split ranked 12th among all men, and he reeled in Bennett to claim 2nd in the M40-44 group by the slimmest of margins.

Drew Miller (4th, 3:06:39) and Michael Harms (5th, 3:09:24) rounded out the top five, with Harms showing his own late-race strength — posting the 43rd-fastest men's split from 30K to 35K after sitting well back in the field through the early going. The 6th-through-10th positions were a genuine logjam: Christopher Cooke, Daniel Royce, Timothy Schwuchow, and then Byers and Ha — all within 109 seconds of each other. In a field of 120 finishers battling heat, wind, and each other, that kind of density at the back of the top ten tells the story of just how competitive the M40-44 group was at Shamrock 2025.