vole stare toad race… 84 hour update
the old king’s reign is down to hours
long live the new king!
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after 3 and a half days on the road
the great vole state toad race is almost ready to crown a new king.
ken zemach came from nevada to try his hand on the tennessee hills…
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and he is good at this.
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18 miles from the finish at check-in
he has opened his lead back up to 16 miles.
no contest is over until it is over,
but ken would have to have a tragic finish not to win now.
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behind bob in second, the third place runner is more than 40 miles further back.
this is good for us at the finish.
since we will probably be up all night tonight with the first two finishers
we ought to be able to get some sleep tomorrow.
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way back in the back with oprah
the tail end of the pack is nearly 200 miles from the finish.
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this is an entirely different race at the far end of the spectrum.
the winners will be done in hours.
the final finishers are more than a day away from the halfway mark.
the winners have run like the wind
every rest break,
every walk
impacting their probability of winning.
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the last wave have not run in days.
they trudge alongside the road.
when it is hot they sweat.
when it rains they get wet.
for them every rest break impacts their chance of survival.
survie d’abord!
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today was hot
but not killing hot.
muggy, suffocating tennessee hot.
the dewpoint is still hovering around 80.
but it could be so much hotter.
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worse than the heat and humidity is the air quality.
with the rain out of the picture
there was a slight haze this morning.
smoke from the canadian wildfires gradually obliterated the view of surrounding hills as the day went on.
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for the long-suffering runners it was just another blow.
there have been so many now that they are hard to distinguish between.
the runners just hunker down
and let the blows bounce off them
like water off a duck’s back.
102 of the original 120 head into the darkness of the 4th night.
how many will see the dawn of day 5?