Pulling away
Pittsburgh native Bowman finds open road in victory
Andrew Bowman had an odd feeling creep over him around the 22nd mile of the Pittsburgh Marathon.
He couldn’t hear anyone behind him, and the silence was deafening.
“It’s a weight off your shoulders. I’ve been in races where a pack of guys are sitting on you the whole time and you’re waiting for them to make that move to take me out of my comfort zone,” Bowman said. “That’s a really intimidating thought and what you don’t want in a race like this.”
Bowman, a Detroit native, broke away from the pack around Mile 16 and pulled away from runner-up Will Loevner between Miles 21 and 22 on his way to winning the rain-spattered Pittsburgh Marathon with a time of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds.
It was the first career marathon win for Bowman, who is married to 2018 women’s division champion Sydney (Devore) Bowman.
“I actually came here because my wife was a champion and she suggested this marathon because this is where she got her start,” Bowman said. “She got me into marathoning and we thought it would be cool to come back to some place that was really special to her and try to pull it off.”
Bowman was wrapped in an American flag immediately after the race and took off back through the finish line gate letting the flag waft behind him as he ran. He didn’t have much time to take his jaunt, but he made it count as his emotions got the better of him.
“I’ve had a lot of high moments in my life,” Bowman said. “I ran in college and did well there, but this was, if not the No. 1 moment for me, definitely in the top three. Just taking that lap, I can’t explain it. It’s just one of those moments.”
Loevner had spent a lot of time over the years at the Pittsburgh Marathon, just never as a runner. The Winchester Thurston High School graduate, who helped the team to the WPIAL and PIAA Class 1A cross country team titles in 2014, worked as a volunteer at the event 10 years ago and was a bike-riding marshal five years
back.
“It’s a dream come true. Growing up here and still living here in the North Hills, I’ve been thinking about this for a year-and-ahalf since I got back into running,” Loevner said. “I hadn’t been running for about five years after college. I was mountain-biking and I never would have thought this was possible.”
Loevner finished the race in 2:17:37, 1 minute and 47 seconds behind Bowman.
“I’m just happy and I worked my butt off to do it,” Loevner said. “I kept trying to stay with the leader and try to make the cut to the next pack. Andy was moving and I was trying to hang onto him, but he got a gap and then I just tried to run my own race.”
Defending champion Tyler McCandless finished third, 8 seconds behind Loevner. No one has repeated as the men’s winner since James Kirwa took back-toback crowns in 2012 and 2013.
On the women’s side, 2023 champion Margo Malone, a North Hills alum, did not compete in the race, but was instead standing at the finish line showing off her baby bump. While she was unable to compete, Chicago native Jane Bareikis slipped in and won her first-ever marathon in her first try in Pittsburgh in 2 hours, 37 minutes, 37 seconds.
Bareikis has been dealing with a severe hamstring injury and nearly pulled out of the race a couple of miles in.
Instead, she gutted it out to edge runner-up Damaris Areba by 55 seconds.
“I wasn’t even sure that I could finish this race,” Bareikis said. “The course was tough and at some point I was mentally whipped and maybe I would quit. But I kept going with my husband and I pulled away and kept surging.”
Bareikis may have been making her first visit to Pittsburgh, but Stephanie Bruce has been here before. The 2019 women’s half-marathon champion, who gave birth to a daughter Sophia only seven months ago, reclaimed her title with a 1 hour, 11 minute, 11 second finish.
And the first thing she did was hold her smiling daughter.
“It’s been five years, a lot of changes and I have out 7month-old daughter with us. To be able to come back and pick up the win is really special,” Bruce said. “It’s different than it used to be, but it was always rewarding. This
has been my job, my profession, and I’m living my dream, but to do it with my kid at the finish line and my two boys back at home, it means a lot.”
While Bruce had a fiveyear gap between her two victories, men’s half-marathon champion Wesley Kiptoo took home the title for the third consecutive year, the first to accomplish the feat since the half-marathon was added in 2009.
He was just off his 2023 record pace of 1 hour, 1 minute, 21 seconds and he hit the tape in 1, hour, 1 minute, 51 seconds. That was still good enough to beat second-place finisher Kenneth Cheserek by 3 minutes, 5 seconds.
“I was just trying to get a good rhythm and get a good run here and I got a win,” Kiptoo said. “Sometimes I like someone to run with, but I was still able to enjoy it.”