The sun is with us again. Temperature of 25 degrees Celsius or more are predicted for today. At this moment the temperature rises by about one degree every ten minutes. For those who are walking at the moment the warmth will do well, for others perhaps it will be really warm within a few hours or even less.
As I said yesterday my opinion was that 24 hour has been evolved tremendously in the last years in the sense that runners have a more smoothly race today. The predictions for men is now almost 260K (for Paul Beckers who is still in the lead), and almost 230K for Irina Reutovich (leading in the women’s race). Following John Baks predictions already 37 athletes will pass the 200K threshold! With still 1/3 of the race to go these figures my become even better knowing that the prediction is based on “old fashioned” way of running for some years ago.
Jean-Paul Praet from Belgium is following the race on internet as well. He wrote “knowing how mentally hard 100K races already are, the 24 hour runners have my deep respect”.
Also after 16 hours race some athletes are still smiling. A big example is Jutta Jöhring, so she will be one of the rising stars in the latest part of the race I believe. Another example is our Dutchman Ben Mol, running is first 24 hour race he will probably become the Dutch Champion in the age group of 50 years and older. For those who did not know; besides the EC there is a Dutch national championship going on as well.
Anton Smeets
a.smeets@trouwweb.nl