M25-29: Driscoll Dominates the Golden Gate 10K

• Harry Driscoll won M25-29 in 35:47 (5:46/mi), finishing 3rd among all men — a commanding margin of 48 seconds over runner-up Christophe Merrier.
• Driscoll posted the 6th-fastest men's split on the 5K→Finish leg in the entire field, confirming he didn't just lead — he closed hard.
• A 1:17 gap separates Merrier (36:35) from third-place Jacques Lemarchand (37:22), making the podium far more spread out than the top-two battle might suggest.
• David Kelly (45:27) and Stan Lieberman (45:28) finished one second apart in 10th and 11th — the tightest duel of the day in M25-29.

Harry Driscoll, 25, from Llandudno Junction, ran the kind of race that makes a field feel the gap. Holding 3rd among all men from start to finish, he never wavered — sustaining a 5:46/mi average across a 60°F, breezy San Francisco morning to cross in 35:47. That's not a win built on a lucky early surge; it's a wire-to-wire statement. His 6th-fastest men's split on the back half of the course shows he had another gear when it counted.

Christophe Merrier, 26, from Thonon, was the closest challenger, finishing 2nd in 36:35 (5:53/mi) and holding 6th among the men throughout. He also posted the 10th-fastest men's split on the 5K→Finish segment — a solid second half, but not enough to close the 48-second gap Driscoll had already built. Jacques Lemarchand, 27, of San Francisco, rounded out the podium in 37:22 (6:01/mi), slipping one spot among the men's field on the back half but still delivering a comfortable 3rd-place finish in M25-29.

The next tier told a very different story. Nathan Wei (4th, 40:30) and Eric Berkovsky (5th, 41:45) both gained ground on the men's field in the second half — Wei moving from 25th to 23rd among men, Berkovsky from 39th to 35th — but neither could threaten the podium, separated from Lemarchand by more than three minutes. Andrew Suk (6th, 42:41) and Sean Yang (7th, 43:15) kept the pressure on through the back half, while the real photo-finish drama belonged to David Kelly and Stan Lieberman, who crossed 10th and 11th in 45:27 and 45:28 — one tick of the clock apart after 6.2 miles through the city.