M70-74: Kunz Owns Fresno at 71

• Michael Kunz won the M70-74 group in 2:05:06 (9:33/mi), finishing more than two minutes clear of the field.
• The top three — Kunz, Steve Behlen, and Doug Fraleigh — were separated by just 2:45 across 13.1 miles.
• Behlen (2:07:17) edged Fraleigh (2:07:51) for 2nd by 34 seconds, with both men running nearly identical 9:43–9:45/mi paces.
• The spread from 1st to last spanned over 71 minutes, with Arnoldo Vargas completing the course in 3:16:56 at 15:01/mi.

Nine men aged 70 to 74 toed the line in Fresno on a warm November morning — 74°F and clear — and Michael Kunz made it look like a training run. The 71-year-old from Fresno averaged 9:33 per mile and crossed in 2:05:06, a performance that held up throughout the race. His gender place tracking tells the story of a man building momentum: he moved from 535th at the mile mark to 432nd at 10K, then surged to 368th by the finish — steadily picking off runners in the back half of the course.

Behind Kunz, a genuine contest played out for 2nd. Steve Behlen of Clovis and Doug Fraleigh of Fresno were essentially racing in lockstep. Both men posted their strongest relative splits on the 1M→10K segment, and at 10K they sat just one place apart in the broader men's field — 391st and 408th respectively. Behlen held his position through the finish while Fraleigh dropped slightly, and the gap between them at the tape was 34 seconds. At 9:43 and 9:45 per mile, you'd need a stopwatch to separate their efforts by feel.

The back half of the M70-74 group tells a different story. Don Rickels (4th, 2:22:45) and Timothy Geddert (5th, 2:28:40) each finished well clear of the hour mark behind the podium trio, while Rogers Speer, Tom Kozera, Pedro Segura, and Arnoldo Vargas spread across a wide range of finishing times from 2:41 to 3:16. Every one of them finished a half marathon in the Fresno heat past 70 years old — that's the baseline worth noting before the gaps are discussed.