Meet the two local entrants who won Saturday’s 2025 Garmin Kansas City Marathon

Medical student Bryce Merriman, 25, ran his first marathon four weeks ago in Illinois. Last week, he traveled to his home city of Wichita for another.

And then, on Saturday, he placed first overall in the 2025 Garmin Kansas City Marathon.

Merriman ran a time of 2 hours, 34 minutes and 55 seconds, capping his third marathon in four weeks. This was his first time running in the Kansas City marathon, and his third marathon ever. The marathon started and ended at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Defending KC Marathon champ Jacob Cofer finished second with a time of 2:37:59, and Weston Christensen was third with a time of 2:39:06.

While Merriman is from Wichita, he has lived in Kansas City for the past two years. He is attending medical school at Kansas City University and said he wanted to give the local marathon a try before he gets too busy with clinical rotations coming up at school.

“It’s kind of, like, a running bucket list thing to win the local marathon,” he said.

Merriman said running provides a good break from his studies. He said he ran 60 to 70 miles a week to prepare for his trio of marathons.

The week before the Kansas City Marathon, though, he focused on recovery and hardly ran at all.

While the fastest female runner, Kenadi Krueger, 23, is originally from Loveland, Colorado, she graduated from the University of Kansas in 2024 and ran for the KU cross country team.

She finished Saturday’s marathon in 3:01.35, blowing her goal of 3 hours, 15 minutes out of the park.

She said she didn’t even think winning was a possibility.

“I thought maybe there was a chance to place top 10. So I was like, ‘OK, maybe I’ll at least try and go for that,’” Krueger said. “But there were people on the sidelines cheering and they were pointing two fingers at me and I was like, ‘Me?’”

Making the story even better, this was Krueger’s first marathon. She ran the first half with a friend and former teammate from KU and said that kept the race stress-free and relaxed. Along the way, she said, her sister, former teammates, fellow running-club members and even strangers who simply knew her name cheered her on.

Catrina Thomas was the second-fastest female competitor with a time of 3:08:33, and Elizabeth Rathjen placed third in 3:12:41.

Second-place men’s and overall finisher Cofer won the marathon last year but said he felt worse this year because of the conditions. The marathon began before the sun came up, the temperature around 70 degrees, but the rays shined brightly and radiated heat throughout the second half of the race.

“Last year was probably just about as perfect as I could ask for,” Cofer said. “This year was a little bit warmer and humid, which definitely made it harder. I knew the second half was just going to be battling to survive, just trying to not fall apart.”

Still, Cofer said he was happy with the effort he gave on the course. He said he wants to get back to training to get even better.

Merriman said he thinks the second-half heat played to his advantage. His strategy was to hang back and watch the leaders for the first half of the race and then “try and knock a couple people off.”

“With me going out a little bit slower, people just started to come back a little more than I thought,” Merriman said.

Even though they both knew what to expect, Merriman and Cofer said the course was difficult because of its many steep hills. Merriman said this year’s course through KC was much harder than his previous marathons.

Krueger said she was nervous about the hills going into the race, but they weren’t as bad as she had feared.

“A few definitely lived up to their name,” she said. “But yeah, there were a lot of little ones that I thought were, like, pretty nice. It also was nice to break up the course. I prefer that than it just being straight and flat.”

Merriman ran cross country at Wichita State and he met his wife on the team. She was cheering for him Saturday, along with his mom, medical school friends and the couple’s 20-month-old daughter.

“It was cool to be able to do it in front of her,” Merriman said. “I’m not sure she knew what was going on, but it was cool to see her at the finish line.”

In a way, Merriman’s daughter has run a marathon, too: Merriam’s wife was pregnant with her when she ran her own marathon two years ago.

Merriman doesn’t know if he can run the Kansas City Marathon again next year, but he knew what he would be doing for the rest of Saturday: studying for a big cardio-pulmonary-renal exam he has next week.

Krueger, meanwhile, said she will definitely be back next year. She has also signed up for a marathon in Nashville and plans to run in the Boston Marathon in 2027.

She said she eventually wants to run in the Chicago, New York and Tokyo marathons, too.

“It means a lot,” Krueger said. “It’s made me addicted to marathons.”

This story was originally published October 18, 2025 at 3:36 PM.