M35-39: Joey Barnett Dominates San Francisco's 10K in 33:36

• Joey Barnett, 37 (San Francisco), wins in 33:36 (5:24/mi) — a gap of more than four minutes over runner-up Joel Triplett (37:36).
• Barnett surged from 2nd to 1st among men in the back half, posting the 2nd-fastest men's split on the 5K→Finish segment in the entire field.
• Tight battle for 3rd–5th: Stephen Kelly (39:25), Digjaya Utama (39:30), and Maxime Rossier (39:39) were separated by just 14 seconds across three spots.
• 244 finishers lined up in M35-39, making it one of the deepest fields of the morning.

Joey Barnett turned the back half of this race into a statement. Running at 5:24/mi through the San Francisco fog — 60°F, a stiff 15 mph wind off the bay, humidity pushing 79% — he wasn't just winning M35-39, he was hunting the overall men's lead. He moved from 2nd to 1st among men after the 5K checkpoint, and his 5K→Finish split was the 2nd-fastest men's split on that segment in the whole field. The four-minute cushion he built over Joel Triplett by the finish line tells you everything about how decisive that second-half surge was.

Triplett, 39, out of San Leandro, held his own in the back stretch — his 5K→Finish split ranked 11th among men — and crossed in 37:36 at 6:03/mi to claim a comfortable second. Behind him, the race for the final podium spot was genuinely tense. Stephen Kelly (36, Hayward) edged Digjaya Utama (35, Mountain View) by just five seconds — 39:25 to 39:30, both averaging 6:21/mi — with Maxime Rossier (38, Monthey) another nine seconds back in 39:39. Rossier slipped one spot in the men's standings on the back half, running the 22nd-fastest men's split on that segment, a tick behind Kelly's 20th.

Further down the leaderboard, Tom Thai (40:52) and Slater Stich (41:04) — both Bay Area locals — rounded out the top seven within 13 seconds of each other, while Ernest Tong and Caleb Ngai crossed in 42:15 and 42:16 respectively, separated by a single second in 8th and 9th. In a 244-person field running through one of the country's most demanding urban courses, Barnett's wire-to-wire dominance in the second half stood as the clear story of the day.