Uden, EC 24 hours
October 21st, 17:45
A Dutch runner is leading in the 24 hours European Championship. Nice because he is a member of the organising athletics club “ De Keien” (which is Dutch for “The Stones”). He is not a member of the Dutch team, so he participates only in the open race and the Dutch Championship. His tactic is to run only the first six hours, have a 12 hour break, an run the last six hours tomorrow.
From the prominents, Hmro Lubomir (second in Verona last year) performs well, as also Lucien Taelman from Belgium (winner EC 1998) and Wim Epskamp of the Netherlands. Alain Bourdon does a good job in the first hours, specially if you take into concern that he started this year with ultrarunning. After some successful six hour races, he run Torhout 100 kilometre, the 12 hours of Cranendonck and now his first 24 hours. Probably he will be thrown back in the second half of the race, but during his 12 hours debut we saw that he is still able in the final part to speed up. So we will see what Uden brings for him in the hours to follow.
The leading lady is Irina Reutovich (winner of Verona last year as well), while the Russian ladies do perform well as expected.
Donald Ritchie just elected in Winschoten to the IAU Hall of Fame does perform very well.
The weather conditions are still very good, and the predicted night temperature will be no less than ten degrees Celsius, so we are looking forward for a good running night.
Anton Smeets
The progress of the runners can be viewed at : http://www.tartan.nl/24hours/standings.asp
{uden1.JPG}