in the final tally,
I am done because I do not want to be party to putting RY in the hospital.
last night, when he did go, was enough.
having seen his physical condition when we left,
I was afraid he might have serious issues.
the "run", for all intents and purposes, is over.
the required daily average, and his maximum daily potential met yesterday.
it was his second 60 mile day while we were here
and, this time it took the entire 24 hours to get it.
the death spiral was complete.
just to stay on pace he had to match yesterday's effort.
with no rest in between.
and he had to do that every day the rest of the run.
that is out of the picture.
looking at the tracker, he has still not moved today.
it is over.
From ulist:
I don't plan to ever write a report about everything I saw
or everything that went on while I was here.
suffice it to say,
that this was not always easy to watch.
this much I will say;
it seems to be a consistent part of this pattern
to make the claims that an individual is somehow "physiologically different" from everyone else.
they are not.
what I saw was the same thing I have seen from multiday runners for decades.
the bright eyed, chipper runner that I first saw last sunday
was reduced to a shambling, hollow eyed, shell.
there were times he was reduced to barely mumbling.
the days he ran his best, were the days he ran the way multi-day runners run.
not the first day, when he tried to blow out those sub-6 minute miles.
like everyone else, he went thru cycles.
during the up times, he moved pretty well.
yesterday was, overall, a really good day.
but, in the final measure, it took all 24 hours to meet the minimum.
and he was wiped out by the effort.
this thing is over.
RY is just a guy, like everyone else.
he looks like a 300 mile 6-day runner.
and that was about what we saw from him while we were out there.
maybe, with good preparation, and a sane strategy, he could run over 350.
having seen how purely tough he is,
I could see him having a shot at 400.
I guess the rest of this saga will play out however it plays out.
but, I gotta say, I found it offensive
seeing the handstand photos and the soccer ball video.
and all that crap early on.
that might have been more of a spur than any of the other stuff
to take a week out of my life,
and spend it on the side of the road.
driving from st Louis to Indianapolis at 2 miles an hour.
if nothing else,
I wanted to see them look like it was a real multiday.
and, for the past 5 days, we got that.
there was not time for anything,
except trying to get miles, or resting to try to get miles.
even driving to a motel a few miles down the road,
was time that was measured, and begrudged,
and often bypassed for the scant minutes saved by sleeping right where they were.
time, the scarcest, of the many scarce resources of the multiday runner.
in the end,
I am sorry I could not write a report about all the good things I found in those guys,
they were open and cooperative.
never made us feel like we were intruders in their show.
they are genuinely nice guys, that I enjoyed getting to know.
and I hope I get to see Robert in some regular multiday races,
where people accept him for who he is,
and he gets to be respected by his peers for the talent and toughness he does have.
laz