HOTS UPDATE 36 hours is a day and a half!
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as the sun approached the horizon on day two
the leaders were emerging from the vortex of rain.
finally they had run all the way across the circling band of rain,
and clear skies were visible ahead….
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they could only pray that the system would not decide to start moving east
and cover them again.
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as the day had worn on there were more and more windows of no rain,
and even a little sunshine broke through at times.
but there were still periods of monsoonlike downpours.
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james turner had grabbed the lead between marion and fredonia.
the first section of road between fredonia and princeton is undoubtedly the worst road on the course.
no matter how hard you try,
there are always some sections of road that are not good,
and this road is one of those.
“new” fredonia road is shoulderless
and has too much traffic.
it requires strict attention to safety
and is pretty much a miserable stretch.
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a few miles out of town the runners cut over to the old fredonia road,
which is a peaceful and quiet country road today.
the best route would have been to take the old road the entire way,
unfortunately the new road eliminated the old one over those first few miles.
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it was on this nasty stretch of road that turner broke things open,
leaving crystal wheatley behind.
he negotiated the trick turn entering princeton,
and survived the biggest deluge of the race (so far)
doing the maze of back roads on the way to cerulean….
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at 36 hours james was at 102 miles,
just past cerulean.
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things dont always go just the way they are planned
and the back road stretch to cerulean had only been included instead of a larger, but less peaceful road
because there was a store in cerulean
and that single store reduced a potentially 22 mile desert to “only” 15 miles ….
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was is the key word.
between the course scouting last winter and the race this summer
the store in cerulean became defunct.
the next chance for resupply would be the dollar general in gracey,
turning the 15 mile desert into a 22 miler.
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navigating the deserts is one of the keys to a crewless journey run.
the athlete has to gauge just how much they need to carry in order to negotiate those long stretches without resupply.
and 22 miles is a lot longer than 15.
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of course we discovered the change driving ahead of the leaders
and immediately contacted bad mike
who relayed the changes to the field….
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james was unfortunately already in the dead zone.
he was going to have to stretch his supplies to cover the extra distance.
but the 13 mile lead he had opened up over wheatley was now a disadvantage.
crystal was still in princeton when the word went out
with the opportunity to study her map and adjust her strategy.
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of course the battle for the top spot was taking on a different form as the lead 400 miler ken zemach had moved into 3rd place by 36 hours.
six miles behind crystal he was expected to pass her later tonight.
and after 36 hours of pursuit he had cut the distance he trailed turner to only 19 miles,
ken had sliced 11 miles off james’ lead in the last 12 hours.
zemach is clearly the favorite to take the lead over the next day or day and a half.
addison hendricks was the next 400 runner,
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technically he was still in 9th place
but he now trailed zemach in third by only 9 miles.
there are a lot of runners still close together.
and another consideration is that addison had taken an extended sleep break
(3 hours)
as we get deeper into the race,
sleep breaks are going to figure into the outcome.
the strategy around where, when, and how much sleep to take can be as challenging as timing the ferry arrival…
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this is a more complicated game than just going out and running!
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nothing has been decided yet.
not even close.
36 hours is just a day and a half,
in a race that could easily last a week….
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and this course still has a lot of tricks up its sleeve.
it will be interesting to see what happens tonight.
Categories: HOTS 2025