Christian Allen of BYU/Nike is leading the OCC and getting zero camera time because he’s a Nike athlete in a Hoka sponsored race. Such blatant disrespect. Don’t understand what the trail community has against Nike. Kid has busted his @ss training. If it was any other brand there they be getting their due. This is a big breakthrough for the world championship qualifier.
I only watched from time to time, but for some reason did see Christian Allen quite a bit at the time and that early move wasn't at all credible. Honnestly I'd rather have had more coverage of the chase group and/or the women's race who seemed to be quite exciting at that time, than a guy having sprinted the first 5km just for the sake of buying camera time for his sponsor (I can't even imagine he was expecting to not crash at some point).
OCC is the shortest qualifying race offered at UTMB and gets the young fast talented crowd. It’s has the highest ranking en masse of all athletes at UtMB. For example, the top female was 28th Overall today but in the classic UTMB 107 miler, women have consistently been in the Top 10 overall due to the lack of depth. Sure there are the Kilians and Walmsleys of the world but after that it’s quite slim. The CCC which is 100km long also gets a lot of great depth and talent but the OCC has been stealing the spotlight the last few years and brands invest more in sponsorship with these athletes than the classic UTMB type.
competitive races today. Finish line was great/ walking the expo now it is quite a busy day AND HOT!
frustration upon first glance as well. not distances, or elevations or any relatable descriptive metric or differentiator between races. no less than 7 completely non-descriptive initialisms (utmb, ccc, tds, occ, ptl, mcc, ycc) are used to label this event. their use in this thread and in event media tells a little about the desire to engage the non-trail/ultra at large fanbase. which is fine, they can keep it as the cool special little thing that is meaningful to the people that love it, but also cant complain when the broader running community sometimes struggles to acknowledge or relate.
For some reason, I don't see the mntion of exact distance or difference of elevation in the term "marathon" either. Worse: I've even heard that some marathons are not ran in the city of Marathon nor on the slopes of Mount Marathon. Pesky little road runners who don't even want to engage with people outside their sport!