The leaders should be finished about now. Anyone heard the results yet?
The leaders should be finished about now. Anyone heard the results yet?
Based on the last webcast update, it looks like Russell and Ricklefs dropped. Crowther is the only one still on pace to break 7 hours. Jurek is a distant second with old man Setnes lurking in third.
Difficult weather conditions always wreck havoc on competitive 100km fields.
bump
Man, Crowther is on a tear. Not bad for 80 mpw!
11 Greg Crowther 7:14:31
27 Scott Jurek 7:32:05
1 Kevin Setnes 7:51:49
46 Roy Pirrung 8:49:28
36 Robert Pokorny 9:00:13
female participants
51 Julie Udchachon 8:09:04
10 Devon Crosby-Helms 8:16:41
47 Carolyn Smith 8:36:39
23 Ann Heaslett 8:45:27
17 Connie Gardner 8:56:08
Looks like conditions took apart a decent field. This race shows how hard it is to run a sub7 100km, esp. considering the prerace talk was about how many would do it. Best performer on the day would be Julie Udchachon, running within seconds of her PR. Looks like Devon Crosby-Helms is the only new qualifier for the national team. Crowther and Udchachon had fast enough times from last year.
Most people who run the arb loop hardly notice the hills, but for the ultra runners, 10 laps, 10 times up those hills was brutal. The temperature at the start was 19 degrees F, and the wind was blowing hard and cold out of the northwest. The first 400m of each lap was directly into the wind, but once they got behind Edgewood College, all they had to deal with was the cold and the hills.
Around the 3 mile mark, in the arboretum, the pavement seemed to give off warmth. Everyone commented on how much warmer it was from miles 3 to 5. But from the 5 mile marker to the finish of each lap, the wind was brutal again. Waves sprayed across the road. The water made icicles on the trees there and in some places the road was slippery.
As hard as it was for the runners, it was also hard on the volunteers at the start. The wind was so, so cold.
Even the relay runners suffered, mainly from having to wait in the cold, sometimes for hours, before getting to run. There was some shelter in a park building but it wasn't fun to stand inside while all the action was on the road. So everyone suffered.
Just a week ago it was 70 degrees here. We had plenty of days in the 40s and 50s. It's April! but it was cold. Brr.
That's Global Warming for you right there. Just think how cold it would have been without that Mr Gore.
Both Greg and Scott are from Seattle, not known for it's tough conditions. They must have either had proper respect for the situation, and paced accordingly, or they were just that much better conditioned than everyone else. I do know that what people elsewhere call "hills" we call "speed bumps".