Two first-time winners race to victory at Air Force Marathon

At one point, one of the runners in the lead pack had to stop for a restroom break. Brown and the other runner told them they would wait for him and slowed their pace enough that he was able to catch up.

Not long after that, though, one runner sped up, forcing Brown to make his move, and he ran away from the group. He was on his own for the last 12 miles and won the 26.2-mile race with a time of 2 hours, 36 minutes and 57 seconds. He averaged 6 minutes per mile.

“I didn’t expect to run this fast because the last three months I’ve just been doing a lot of trail running,” Brown said. “I’m training for a 100-miler in three weeks. So I was very surprised I was able to run that fast.”

This was Brown’s third Air Force Marathon appearance and his first victory. He grew up in Joplin, Mo., but now lives in San Diego, Calif.

Brown is in the Air Force Reserves. He did eight years of active duty and is now going to school full time.

Brown ran the 400-meter dash in high school but started running longer distances when he joined the Air Force.

“We did like a 10-mile formation run one day,” he said, “and I was like, ‘This is so much fun.’”

Brown finished about four minutes ahead of William Burns (2:39:59), of Falmouth, Mass. Aidan Boyle (2:40:22), of Wichita Falls, Texas, took third.

Adrianna Dong, of Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, won the women’s race in 3:13:33. Her pace was 7:23. It was her first marathon victory, and she said she was surprised to win.

Dong started running in high school but took years off before getting back to the sport in 2022 when she first ran the Air Force Half Marathon.

“Honestly, I didn’t know that I was going to be winning,” Dong said. “I was running along, and then all of a sudden, there was this bike next to me, and I said, ‘Why are you following me?; And he said, ‘I have to follow the first female. I was like, ‘Wow, awesome.’

“This was basically my first marathon. I ran one 10 years ago to pace my sister, but this is the first marathon I’ve run for me.”

Dong is a major and a pilot instructor in the Air Force.

“Obviously, there are a lot of service members here, so it’s pretty cool,” she said. “It was fun because I’m on the Air Force marathon team. I am on Team Raptor, so it was cool running with other people and feeling like I had something to aim toward and make my team proud.”

Bridget McCormack, of Oklahoma City, finished second in the women’s race in 3:25:43. Kathryn Kephart, of Bellefonte, Pa., was third in 3:30:35.

Here are the winners of the other races:

• Half marathon: Ryan Johnson, of Waltham, Mass., was the men’s winner (1:07:08). Kayla Regulski, of Los Gatos, Calif., won the women’s race (1:22:27).

• 10K: Brett Lechtenberg, of Iowa City, Iowa, won the men’s race (34:33). Elizabeth Rodriguez, of Allentown, Pa., won the women’s race (41:29).

• 5K: Lechtenberg won the men’s race (16:35). Rodriguez won the women’s race (19:25).

• Handcrank marathon: Casey Falkner, of Stevensville, Mich., won the men’s race (1:12:14). Holly Koester, of Walton Hills, Ohio, won the women’s race (2:02:09).

• Pushrim marathon: Josh Sommers, of Plain City, Ohio, won the men’s race (2:51:41).

• Military winners: Brown and Dong were also the military winners for the full marathon, and Johnson was the top member of the military to finish the men’s half marathon. Emily Shertzer, of Jonestown, Pa., was the top female military finisher in the half (1:24:14).