The lead group of last weekend’s Oakland Marathon was, at mile 22, so tightly bunched that when one runner faltered, the other three leaders started to pull away within seconds.

But in a rare marathoning moment, the trio churning out consistent six-minute mile splits didn’t surge away from a fading Brian Gillis—they slowed a bit, shouted encouragement, and shepherded him in for the final four miles.

And that’s exactly what they wanted: win the 2018 Oakland Marathon by crossing the finish line at the exact same time of 2:37:19. Crosby Freeman, 34, Sam Robinson, 33, Paul Balmer, 28, and Gillis, 30—all friends and members of the relentlessly quirky Bay Area-based That’s Fine Track—couldn’t have planned it out better.

“Normally, we’re pretty competitive, but we mused about how fun it would be to run together and win the race,” Gillis said. “As we started to round into shape this year, we realized that we were all capable of running a time that would win in previous years, so we made a plan to run the first half of the race together and see how things shook out.”

Any one of the four could have broken the tape—the fifth-place finisher was more than 14 minutes back—but a four-way tie was always the plan.

“If there was competition, anyone who was feeling good would go for the win, but the priority was always to finish together at the top of the podium,” Gillis said.

Gillis, a resident of Oakland who works in marketing for GU Energy, ran track with Balmer at Pomona College, where Freeman had graduated two years prior. Robinson, a freelance writer who also calls Oakland home, ran at Furman University. All four are founding members of That’s Fine Track Club, a grassroots group that started in 2012 and is overall, pretty fast. (Team members also placed first and second in the Oakland Half Marathon the same weekend.)

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“It may sound like an unusual idea, but finishing together for the win, and even our team name, honors our collegiate coach, Patrick Mulcahy, a great coach known for his directness,” Gillis said. “If you had a great race, you received a compliment of, ‘That’s fine.’ A bad race would inspire him to say, ‘Well, that sucked.’”

Since That’s Fine was founded, the collegial crew has racked up other significant wins, including three-straight wins at the Tahoe Relay, a seven-runner trek around Lake Tahoe’s 72 miles of shoreline.

The 20 core members of the team are almost universally fast—Kristyn Kadala, a That’s Fine runner, took second place in the women’s division in 2:57—but the club is open to all. And while they don’t have any plans to share a podium any time soon, they hope to stage the third iteration of their own race this year: the Port Mile Relay, which takes place along the same Oakland industrial waterfront where the early miles of the Oakland Marathon were held.

Like the group, the Port Mile Relay is also a bit different by switching up the beer mile format a bit: four teammates run a mile each, chugging a beer after their leg.

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