Seth Meyers Ran a 5K With His 10-Year-Old Son—and Placed Top 5 in His Age Group

Celebrity runners seem to be everywhere right now, and a bulk of my social media feeds seem to include some fit A-lister, reality star, or weed-smoking musician who has suddenly discovered Strava exists.Seth Meyers, though, isn’t exactly brand new to pounding pavement. The former Saturday Night Live cast member and Late Night host has talked about marathons before, and this weekend he added a much sweeter race to the list: a 5K with his 10-year-old son, Ashe.Meyers posted before-and-after photos from the Chilmark Road Race in Chilmark, Massachusetts, with a caption that summed up the day.“Before and after of father/son road race,” he wrote on Instagram. “Learned the key to a top five finish in your age group is to keep running until the field narrows…”His results proved he’s no novice. According to the race results, Meyers finished in 23:16.74, good for a 7:30 pace. He placed 173rd overall out of 1,473 runners and fifth out of 88 in the men’s 50–59 age group.Ashe finished in 42:20.14, running 13:38 pace and placing 17th out of 21 in the boys 9–11 division. For a 10-year-old, that’s already a pretty solid way to spend a summer race morning with Dad. For Meyers, it means the father-son race dynamic may only get more competitive from here, especially if Ashe starts shaving serious time off that 5K.The age-group strategy joke also landed with some fellow runners in the comment section. One person wrote, “That’s also my dads strategy-he is 85 and now he wins his age category 😂.” Another added, “This is a critical race tactic that not enough people talk about.”Running has been in Meyers’ life for a while, and not just in the “few leisurely miles” sense. During a 2024 Late Night conversation with actor Colin Farrell, who was preparing for the Dublin Marathon, Meyers casually brought up his own 26.2 history, saying he had run marathons in both Leiden and Helsinki. He also said he made it halfway through Stockholm before knee trouble and IT band issues caused him to call it quits halfway.Canadian Running has previously reported that Meyers ran 4:01 at the Helsinki Marathon in 2007, an impressive feat since Running USA’s 2023 Industry Insights report lists the average male marathon finish in his age bracket at 4:17:00.In that same conversation, Farrell talked about the buzz of race day, and Meyers agreed that it really does feel like magic, joking that at least it does “for the first third.”The Chilmark 5K probably had the race-day buzz Meyers and Farrell were talking about, plus a cute family finish and no double-digit miles left to survive. And if Meyers ever wants to chase that feeling a little closer to home, Central Park, Prospect Park, and a certain five-borough marathon are all right there waiting for him.Sean Abrams was the Senior Editor, Growth and Engagement at Men’s Health. He’s a former hip hop dancer who likes long walks on the beach and large glasses of tequila. You can find his previous work at Maxim, Elite Daily, and AskMen.