Two Cities Marathon M50-54: Scott Goss Runs Away With It

• Scott Goss won the M50-54 group in 2:52:46 (6:35/mi), finishing more than 15 minutes clear of second-place Ricky Sarmiento (3:08:14).
• Goss posted the fastest men's split on the 10K-to-half segment in the entire men's field — a decisive mid-race surge that effectively ended the contest.
• Places 6–8 were separated by just 6 seconds: Eran Bendavid (3:49:07), Elmer Zelaya (3:49:10), and Ronald Almasy (3:49:13) ran the tightest cluster of the day in M50-54.
• 21 men finished in the M50-54 age group, with finish times ranging from 2:52:46 to well over six hours.

Scott Goss made this one look almost unfair. The 50-year-old from Clovis came through the opening 10K well back in the men's field — sitting around 104th among men — then unleashed a blistering middle stretch. By the halfway mark he had rocketed to 2nd among men, a move backed by the fastest men's split on that 10K-to-half segment in the entire men's field. He faded from that extraordinary mid-race position as the miles stacked up, but the damage was already done in M50-54. His 6:35/mi average on a warm November day in Fresno — 74°F and clear — was a performance no one in the age group could answer.

Ricky Sarmiento from Hawthorne was the clear runner-up, crossing in 3:08:14 (7:11/mi) and moving steadily through the men's field all day, climbing from 158th at the first checkpoint to 47th by the finish. Fellow Clovis runner Robert Roman rounded out the podium in 3:18:40, and Patrick Marino — also from Clovis — took fourth in 3:33:45, making it three of the top four from the same Central Valley city.

The race's most entertaining subplot played out between places six, seven, and eight. Bendavid, Zelaya, and Almasy crossed within a six-second window — 3:49:07, 3:49:10, and 3:49:13 — after 26.2 miles of racing. Those three men ran essentially the same marathon and the timing chip sorted them out. Behind them, the field spread wide, with Josh Hawley (5th, 3:40:45) and the rest of the group ranging all the way to Krishnna Reyes, who covered the course in 6:28:51 — a reminder that finishing a marathon at any pace in this heat is its own achievement.